Pacific Islands

Ten years after Timor-Leste became an independent state, new schools are built every week and more students are going to school than ever before.

After hundreds of years of being a colony, in 1999 the United Nations administered a popular consultation, which allowed the people of Timor-Leste to decide in a referendum whether they wanted to become an independent state. I was 15 years old when the referendum took place. Just a few weeks before the consultation day, my family dropped me off on the island of Flores to attend high school. I remember clearly that as I waited on the dock of the ferry that took me away from the capital city of Dili, I prayed for peace to my country. I swore only to return after my country found its final freedom from colonization.

On the morning of August 30, 1999, I sat in my literature class listening to my teacher and other classmates discussing Timor-Leste and its future. My classmates asked my teacher why the Timorese wanted independence. My teacher looked at me and asked, “What do your parents think of this referendum? Do they also want Timor-Leste to become independent?” Fearing for the safety of my family and myself, I looked away and said that I had no idea where my parents stood on this issue. My heart ached to scream “Viva Timor Leste!” – but I knew full well that it would be asking for trouble to do that. That evening, sitting in front of TV, along with my other flat mates, we watched how the Timorese were dressed up early in the morning to go to the polling place. Many were dancing “dahur”, a Timorese traditional dance, as the long awaited day had finally arrived.

Elimbari is one of Kongo Coffee's  special reserve coffees. Kongo is one of the country’s three largest exporters in Papua New Guinea.

Goroka is the provincial capital in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, and home to extensive networks of smallholder coffee producers.  PNG’s fertile lands produce a broad range of tropical and temperate crops, and the 85 percent or more of the population who live in rural areas combine household food production with cash crops. Cash is needed to pay school fees for kids, pay for transport to health posts and then meet doctor and medicine charges. Cash also has become critical for many non-market exchanges such as bride prices, funeral and compensation payments, and other social obligations. While the performance of food crops has been good and has kept pace with population growth, PNG’s main cash crops, including coffee and cocoa, has been below potential.

Coffee production is the backbone of the rural economy in the Highlands; across the nation, approximately 2-2.5 million of PNG’s 6 million people depend on coffee production for cash needs. Almost all coffee produced in PNG is arabica, and exporters see a sustained demand for PNG coffee with markets able to absorb a doubling of high-quality premium smallholder product. The challenge for PNG coffee growers is to produce consistently the quantity and quality required by those markets.

Despite a surge in joblessness and a regional drop of the forecasted GDP growth to 5.3 percent expected in 2009, developing East Asian and Pacific countries may be able to look to China for hope during the current global economic slowdown. That's according to the World Bank's April 2009 edition of the East Asia & Pacific Update, which was released today.

The latest half-yearly assessment of the region's economic health, aptly titled "Battling the Forces of Global Recession", says there have already been signs of China's economy bottoming out by mid-2009. China's possible subsequent recovery in 2010, concludes the report, could contribute to the entire region's stabilization, and perhaps recovery.

There are a number of ways to review the findings of the report on the World Bank's website. Head over to worldbank.org/eapupdate to view specific chapters or download the full report. For an intimate view of people who are being affected by the ongoing financial crisis in East Asian and Pacific countries – including Cambodia, Thailand, Mongolia and the Philippines – check out "Faces of the Crisis". You can also view hi-res graphs from the report here.

Also, check back here in the next day or so for blog posts written by World Bank economists based in Cambodia and Lao PDR.

UPDATE: For country-specific expert perspectives on the new World Bank repot, check out blog posts from World Bank economists based in Cambodia and Laos. Stéphane Guimbert considers what contraction might look like in Cambodia. And Katia Vostroknutova takes a look at Laos' economy, which is less affected by crisis, but faces the increasing challenge of sustaining growth during the crisis.

The country is often dismissed as the Pacific's failed state, yet conversations with community members and officials reveal clear visions of what a state can provide in terms of services and a role in community life.

The Gizo airport in Solomon Islands has no parking lot, because there is no road – only a jetty out into the lagoon. It took me several minutes and a walk around the solitary airport building to work this out, by which point my plane had already headed back to Honiara, the country’s capital.

The Gizo airstrip, reportedly built for a visit by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in the 1970s, occupies the entire length of the island of Nusatupe – as a quick look at Google Maps confirms. It is located picturesquely, if ultimately somewhat inconveniently, about two kilometers from the provincial capital island of Gizo. As I was beginning to wonder how I was going to make my way to Gizo, a team from the Government’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock fortunately pulled up in an outboard motorboat.

In December, just three months after my arrival in the Solomon Islands to serve as the World Bank’s country manager, I chose Western Province for my second trip out of Honiara. One of the main goals in my first year on the job is to visit each of the nine provinces to begin gaining some understanding of this small but complex country.