Develop rural areas to move away from buai trade

By David Kitchnoge

The recent initiative by NCDC to rid buai off the streets in Port Moresby has seen people expressing varying views on the issue. While the health and hygiene issues that buai create are easily seen and well understood, I do not believe we have thoroughly considered and debated the economics of buai trade.

So many people chew buai in Papua New Guinea. Buai is known as betel nut and it goes with lime and mustard/leaves. When chewing, it produces red juice

Buai trade is a micro economic activity that enables so many of our people, particularly the urban poor, to earn a living and to take this away from them would be suicidal. But does it help to grow our national economy?

From a macro economic perspective, buai is a commodity that adds no value to our total economy because it is neither an export nor a substitute for an import. Hence, the total worth of the buai economy remains the same with the buai kina only changing hands between different individuals involved. This results in a stagnant national economy or worse still, a declining economy when you consider the imbalance in population and economic growths.

Here is a hypothetical illustration of how the buai trade creates stagnation in the economy. A household family have K100 which is what’s left of their father’s final pay packet. If they do nothing else from now on but grow and trade widgets among themselves, they have no way of growing that K100.

Each member of the family will at some stage own a portion of the K100 and then shift it to the next person in the next trade. They continue doing this and live happily until they decide to buy a new radio for the family worth K150. Everyone contributes towards this but all they can manage is an aggregate of K100 and are still short of K50.

Engaging in widget trade does not mean the family have been lazy though. Unfortunately, they have been directing their time and energy towards an activity that never contributed in bringing new money into their total family wealth.

Buai trade in our country works in a similar way. It does not make our people lazy but rather distorts their priorities and leads them to utilise their labour in an inefficient manner because of a lack of better alternatives. It is a gainful activity for them as individuals but is not so when considered at a macro economic level.

Buai is the a pastime choice used in many parts of PNG. It is chewed with lime and a mustard stick and spit out the red saliva. It's like an amphetamine-but tastes disgusting!

In my opinion, the key is for the government to start developing the rural areas and opening up access to markets by building and maintaining transport infrastructure and bringing other enabling services like health and education into these regions. People will hopefully respond to this by going back home and engage in the production of export commodities such as coffee, cocoa and copra or alternatives for imports such as rice, fresh fruits and vegetables.

Buai vendors are not lazy people and must not be condemned to the doldrums. In fact, these are the most enterprising and productive people who are unfortunately directing their entrepreneurial spirit and productivity towards an economically misguided activity. The government must recognise this and step up and offer better alternatives for them to utilise themselves in ways that enable both individual as well as collective gains.

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