PNG is experiencing a minerals boom and confronts serious challenges in translating increased resource revenues into effective development outcomes. Together with the National Research Institute the Development Policy Centre is undertaking the "Promoting Effective Public Expenditure Project" over the next three years to help navigate this critical period.

The project better understand how PNG allocates its public funds and then how their funds are provided to and used by those responsible for delivering basic services.

Formally, the objectives of the project are as follows:

• To analyse the allocation of public funds across expenditure priorities in PNG.
• To analyse the performance of a range of current PNG Government expenditure reforms in translating budget allocations into effective service delivery performance, and to understand the reasons for their success or failure.
• To feed these results back to PNG's political and bureaucratic leadership, civil society and general public and to influence allocations and expenditure rules to promote better allocations and more effective and transparent expenditure.

The project consists of two inter-related components. The first focuses on analysing the allocation of PNG's public resources through the budget process. The findings of this analysis, as well as the surveys discussed below, will be presented at twice yearly budget fora to provide a more systematic understanding of how PNG allocates its public resources, which helps reveal the government's policy priorities.

The second component focuses on understanding local expenditure dynamics and reforms. Though an expenditure tracking survey focusing on local schools and health facilities, we will get a better understanding of whether funds are being effectively managed to deliver services. In particular, we will focus on recent reforms to see whether they are yielding improvements in service delivery.

The project runs from 2012 to 2014. If you are interested, please contact Modowa Gumoi <nri.org.pg> or Colin Wiltshire <anu.edu.au>.