The PNG Provincial Budget Database is a spreadsheet containing historical and the most recently available provincial revenue and expenditure data. It also contains a list of subnational governments down to Local Level Governments (LLGs), and 2021 province and district populations.
The revenue data includes: Goods and Services Tax (GST); Bookmakers Tax; Own Source Revenue; Royalties; and Dividends. GST and Bookmakers Tax are collected by the Internal Revenue Commission (IRC), with 60% and 40% remitted to provinces respectively. Own Source revenue, royalties, and dividends are collected solely by the province.
Province expenditure by is broken into two parts: operational expenditure; and capital spending under national government's Public Investment Program (PIP). Operational expenditure is further broken up into staff salaries and goods and services.
The Services Improvement Program (SIP) are constituency development funds (CDFs) given to each province (PSIP) and district (DSIP) member of parliament. SIP funds are contained in the province's PIP. Figures here are totals given to the province. All figures reported are in nominal Kina.
Function grants are national government transfers fund service delivery when there is shortfall in provincial revenue. The function grants tab lists the break-up in service delivery spending sectors and is aggregated under the “Goods and Services” category in the province budgets tab.
The Provincial Budget Database also lists budget quality scores produced by the National Economic and Fiscal Commission (NEFC) between 2010 and 2018. It also reports national government revenue and spending sourced from the National Budget Database, and PNG's CPI as reported by the Bank of PNG.
The final tab in the Provincial Budget Database contains the acquittal status for SIP spending for all of PNG;s provinces and districts since 2013. This tab contains information on if acquittals were submitted, and SIP projects monitored and appraised, or if acquittals were not submitted.
To access the Database, click on the link below. The most recent version of the Database includes 2023 data for province revenue, and operational and capital spending. Function grants have also been updated with 2023 data. More recent versions will be added over time.
The PNG Provincial Budget Database was created by Maholopa Laveil, Economics Lecturer at the University of Papua New Guinea. You can read the seven blogs Maholopa wrote using this data on the Devpolicy Blog. You can also read the corresponding Lowy Institute Discussion Paper.
If you wish to cite the province data, please cite them in the following way: Laveil Maholopa, 2024. Papua New Guinea Province Budget Database. Accessed online at: https://crawford.anu.edu.au/development-policy-centre/png-budget-database/
• PNG Provincial Budget Database - released December 2024
