EAP - The Pacific Infrastructure Challenge - World Bank (2006).pdf

6.2 Challenges to Institutions and Management in the Pacific
Poor institutional performance is generally likely to be the result of poor policy.
However, it may also be a product of some inherent characteristics – additional
institutional challenges which policy needs to overcome. In other words, Pacific
island states may share some characteristics which create additional barriers for policy
to overcome. In a sense, this would mean that Pacific Islands “have to run just to
stand still” in order to achieve similar infrastructure outcomes to comparator
countries.
Pacific countries share a number of features that make it more difficult to develop
strong institutions and management. It is important to understand what these are, so
that we can take them into account in commenting on infrastructure performance,
and in developing recommendations for improved performance. These features
include:
The Pacific region’s dependence on aid
Population size and density
Ethnic diversity
Political economy and security concerns
Land rights
Low rural to urban migration
Small pool of skilled labor
Youthful population
The Pacific Diaspora.
We discuss each characteristic, its impact on institutions and management, and
discuss the extent to which each Pacific country faces these challenges. Since
different countries face these challenges to a different degree, understanding of these
characteristics should allow us to modulate our discussion about how to improve
infrastructure performance to the specific needs of each country.
6.2.1 The Pacific region’s dependence on aid
Table 6.3 shows that Pacific countries received the highest per capita donor aid of
any region in the world from 1970 to the turn of the 20 th century. Per capita aid is
over 6 times as great in the Pacific as in the Caribbean. In total, over $49 billion of
aid was disbursed into the region in the 30 years from 1970.
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