Pacific Magazine > Magazine > February 28, 2008

Voices

Five Out Of Ten

Rating RAMSI's Mixed Record

By Gaurav Sodhi

Gaurav Sodhi

The Solomon Islands were named for the belief that they were rich in treasures.  Today, however, the Solomon Islands is the poorest and least developed country in the South Pacific.

The people of the Solomon Islands are no better off today than they were at independence 30 years ago. It was in the context of such stagnation that civil unrest erupted in the late 1990s. By the time RAMSI landed in 2003, the Solomon Islands was on the brink of becoming the region’s first failed state. RAMSI came with the support of the Solomon Islands’ population, its government, and the region. Hopes were high that the intervention would improve the country's lot. Yet, now in its fifth year, RAMSI’s success to date has been mixed.

Measured by its security objectives alone, the intervention has been enormously successful. Since 2003, over 6,000 militants have been arrested, over 9,000 charges have been laid, and more than 3,000 guns have been confiscated under RAMSI's watch. Civil stability has returned.

RAMSI has also managed a return to macroeconomic stability that is essential as a base for future growth. The tax system has improved, with government revenues increasing.  Other efforts have focused on reducing regulatory hurdles to beginning formal businesses, and on easing restrictions on hiring and firing. Government slush funds are less common now that audits are regularly conducted and accounting systems are in place. 

But these changes do nothing to address the constraints that have stifled economic development in the Solomon Islands for 30 years.  The majority of Solomon Islanders have not been affected by these measures because this is not where the bottlenecks to economic growth are. Over 85 percent of the population is dependent on subsistence agriculture, while the formal economy is mostly composed of the public service. Youths and men are at best woefully underemployed, with chewing betel nuts their only occupation.  There are few income-earning opportunities in the villages, and no jobs in the towns. 

The underdevelopment of the Solomon Islands is damning of governments since independence, but also of the many aid organizations that have little improvement to show for their hundreds of millions of dollars of largesse. Countless agencies have made the same recommendations and the same promises, yet the land tenure  reforms and infrastructure that are  essential to agricultural and private sector development have been ignored.

Agriculture is the key to raising rural living standards, and uncertainty of land tenure is the key impediment to raising agricultural output and incomes.

Infrastructure is the second bottleneck. Without roads, education, inter-island transport, and mobile phones, agriculture and small off-farm business cannot develop.  Employment creation is desperately needed.

The security gains made by RAMSI are fragile, and will not last while the Solomon Islands teems with unemployed youth sitting in the shade with nothing to do. They are a harbinger of future instability.

Without taking greater responsibility for employment generation and economic development, RAMSI risks becoming just another agency promising to deliver development with little improvement to show for their pledges. Without addressing the real constraints to development, RAMSI's mission is only half complete.

Gaurav Sodhi is a researcher at the Centre for Independent Studies. “Five Out of Ten: A Performance Report on RAMSI" is available at www.cis.org.au.