Yearbook 2004
Papua New Guinea. The total population in Papua New Guinea is 8,947,035 people in 2020. Prime Minister Michael Somare visited China at the beginning of the year and signed a number of important trade agreements. China plans, among other things, large investments in nickel and cobalt mining in Papua New Guinea to secure raw materials for the extensive Chinese iron and steel production. There are also plans for Chinese gas extraction in Papua New Guinea. The previously uncertain gas pipeline project to Australia got a fresh start during the year, when a subsidiary of ExxonMobil struck a deal with Australian companies.
Domestic politics was as unstable as before. In April, the opposition made a failed attempt to gather support in Parliament to unseat Prime Minister Somare. At the same time, there was a prolonged battle over the election of a new general governor. After a series of unsuccessful polls, Paulias Matane could be elected by a small majority in May.
Increasingly violent crime and corruption forced the government to comply with former colonial power Australia’s demand to include its own police and state officials in aid to Papua New Guinea. In December, the first Australian police officers began patrolling Papua New Guinea’s streets.
After several volcanic eruptions, at the end of the year, authorities were forced to evacuate over 9,000 people from the island of Manam in eastern Papua New Guinea, where residents’ chances of survival disappeared as a result of falling volcanic ash.
The result of the somewhat chaotic election process was only clear a month later, when it became clear that the leader of the National Alliance, Michael Somare, had won a majority. One of the new prime minister’s first office actions was to halt the privatization program launched under his predecessor Moraute. As a reason, Somare indicated that the state needed more time to analyze the basis of the program and what benefits it could provide for the state. Both the World Bank and the IMF were major supporters of the privatization program. Among the new goals of the new government were the adoption of immediate steps to combat poverty, chronic unemployment and widespread crime.
88 Australians died in a terrorist attack on Bali in Indonesia in October 2002. It helped develop a demand by the Australian government to intervene in neighboring internal affairs – notably Solomon Islands and Papua. In December 2003, therefore, an agreement was reached between Australia and Papua on the posting of 230 Australian police officers and 70 senior Australian officials in Papua in 2004. Initially, the Government of Papua had sharply rejected the Australian claim go referred to it as “neocolonialist”, but it got Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard to threaten to cease development assistance to Papua. That forced Somare’s government to bow, and the first Australian police arrived in Papua in December 2003.
In the May and June 2005 elections, Joseph Kabui of the Bougainville People’s Congress was elected President of the Bougainville Autonomous Government with 54.7% of the vote.
In 2005, China decided to finance the opening of a cobalt and nickel mine in Papua worth $ 650 million. US $. In January 2006, the Chinese government, through the state-owned Chinese oil company, signed an agreement with Papua on joint extraction of the country’s gas deposits.
Human and economic geography
State of Oceania, located in the western section of the Pacific Ocean, north of the Cape York Peninsula of Australia. The population (5,190,786 residents at the 2000 census) is divided into two main strains (the Melanesian one, mostly settled in the northern coastal areas, and the Paupasian one, settled in the mountainous areas of the interior and the South), which are in turn articulated in numerous clans.
The economy is characterized by a significant presence of the primary sector, which contributes 35.3% to the formation of GDP (2005) and occupies 85%of the active population; despite this, subsistence crops are unable to cover domestic food needs and the country is forced to resort to imports, while commercial productions (cocoa, coffee, coconut palm, tea and rubber) are largely in excess and feed a consistent flow export. Papua New Guinea contains a considerable set of mineral wealth (especially gold and copper) and energy (natural gas and oil), the exploitation of which, developed thanks to the huge Australian and Japanese investments, contributes about a quarter to the formation of national income, despite the problems involving him, linked to corruption and excessive interference by politics in economic affairs.
The manufacturing sector appears weak, with food (sugar), mechanical and wood industries; tourism, which is susceptible to development, still plays a secondary role. Overall, the country is unable to get a certain level of development off the ground because it is affected by both the difficult morphological and climatic conditions, the scarcity of infrastructures and the limited internal market.