The World Bank Group in Papua New Guinea - Country Program Evaluation,

Melinda Jane Sutherland, former assistant director at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and currently a senior evaluation specialist in the Independent Evaluation Department at the Asian Development Bank, and Stephen Howes, professor of economics at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University and the director of the Development Policy Centre. [...] The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund cited the overvaluation of the kina as constraining growth in the nonextractive sectors and called for a gradual relaxation in exchange rate restrictions. [...] After assessing the evolution and performance of the Bank Group’s country strategy and portfolio, the evaluation drills down on those development themes that the external literature and the 2018 SCD identified as binding constraints to growth and poverty reduction. [...] The World Bank built on its long-standing engagement in the transport sector to support the second phase of a road program focused primarily on sections of the Hiritano Highway, which connects the capital to a secondary city in the Gulf of Papua region, whereas the Asian Development Bank focused primarily on rehabili- tating the Highlands Highway, for example. [...] The need to improve governance and institutions and subnational engage- ment—prominent themes of the 2018 RRA and the SCD—are a focus of the CPF for FY19–23.