PNG Government Inherited Broken Monitoring System, Says NMCA Chief

Papua New Guinea’s public spending oversight has come under fresh scrutiny, with the head of the National Monitoring and Coordination Authority warning that the country has inherited a system that is no longer delivering results for its people.

 PNG Government Inherited Broken Monitoring System, Says NMCA Chief /File Photo

Chief Executive Officer of the National Monitoring and Coordination Authority, David Wereh, said the public service–led monitoring and coordination structures have become fragmented over time, resulting in weak oversight and ineffective implementation of government programs.

He revealed that a review covering the last 12 years of national budget expenditure showed that more than K214 billion had been spent with little evidence of consistent monitoring and accountability for decisions that were never implemented.

According to Mr Wereh, several core state institutions gradually drifted from their original mandates, weakening the overall governance framework. He explained that agencies that were meant to focus on performance tracking and enforcement instead shifted toward administrative or funding-related roles.

He pointed out that Treasury moved away from its role of economic monitoring and became largely focused on issuing budgets and warrants, while Finance evolved into a cheque-confirmation function rather than actively supervising cash flow management. Planning, he added, moved deeper into project management rather than assessing outcomes, and PMNEC became more of a submissions channel than an enforcement centre.

Mr Wereh said this institutional drift created overlapping responsibilities, poor coordination, and weak enforcement across the system. As a result, even projects that received funding often delivered limited results on the ground.

He stated that the establishment of the NMCA in 2025, under the nation’s 50th Anniversary reform agenda, is intended to restore accountability and ensure development funds translate into real infrastructure such as roads, classrooms and hospitals, with modern tools like real-time monitoring, independent audits and digital dashboards aimed at eliminating ghost projects and misuse of public funds.