Solid progress has been made towards the project objectives so far during 2008-09. A first key step was to gather and collate basic information about ACIAR's PNG portfolio.
The ACIAR PNG portfolio is lengthy, reflecting the 25 years that ACIAR has invested in the country. In all, 146 active and completed projects in PNG (including multilateral projects) have been identified for this study. Of these, 115 project summaries have been identified for 91 completed and 24 current projects. Early on, it was decided, in concert with ACIAR, that multilateral projects would be excluded, leaving a total of 100 projects in the possible sample.
The total nominal budget for the 100 bilateral projects identified was around $46 million. Tree crops collectively account for just over a quarter of all ACIAR bilateral projects. This group contains coffee, cocoa, coconut and oil palm. The second largest category is other horticulture, which includes all horticulture (fruit, vegetables, nuts) excluding sweet potato. Forestry accounts for 15 per cent of total expenditure, while fisheries projects account for 11 per cent. In terms of expenditure the greatest concentration of projects in PNG have a budget of between $500 000 and $750 000. This information and an issues paper was presented early on to a meeting of the project reference group in Canberra.
Qualitative information on key characteristics of projects has been gathered where available (resources, research institutions, researchers and ACIAR program managers involved, nature of research activities and coverage by evaluation or other studies). The project team has developed this information using available documentation including adoption studies, impact assessments, working papers, annual reports and final reports of projects. As some of the portfolio has project completion dates as far back as the late 1980s, this process is primarily dictated by information availability. More recent projects, especially those commencing after the mid 1990s, generally have more information available, which partly reflects increasing reporting requirements for researchers over time. This set of more detailed information, developed so far on a set of 22 projects includes detailed summaries of the nature of research activities, background on the commodity and problems the researchers have perceived, project inputs, the outputs and any outcomes, impacts and policy recommendations suggested by researchers. This more detailed information set is focussed on those projects with the best information and documentation.
Using this more detailed information set, supplemented by discussions with researchers has allowed the project team to make progress in identifying and assessing a range of relevant policy, institutional and economic factors that may affect project impact. The current project focus is consideration of the most effective way of honing in on the appropriate smaller set of projects to conduct the deeper assessment of how economic, policy and institutional factors affect adoption and impact. Having made as much progress as is possible with a desk review, the project team will travel to PNG between 8 and 19 June 2009 for consultations to inform its judgements about the deeper assessment and policy recommendations for ACIAR projects. This visit will involve consultations with a range of stakeholders both involved in PNG ACIAR projects and agriculture in PNG generally. At this stage, a list of around 30 people have been lined up for the in country discussions.