This thesis discusses “Institutionalization and Challenges of the Petroleum Fund in Timor-Leste." It rests on natural resource curse argumentation that countries with natural resource abundance tend to develop slowly and prone to generate overall ne...
This thesis discusses “Institutionalization and Challenges of the Petroleum Fund in Timor-Leste." It rests on natural resource curse argumentation that countries with natural resource abundance tend to develop slowly and prone to generate overall negative development outcomes. A number of country in Africa and Latin America have proven that dependence on natural resources triggers political conflict apart from an increased level of corruption and fail to alleviate poverty. However, from optimistic views, natural resources might be useful to boost economic development, like most of the developed countries in their early stages of development. Nevertheless, heavily dependent on natural resources will bring about disaster given their status as non-renewable resources. Therefore, wise management is required to transform natural resources from “curse to blessing.”
Timor-Leste highly depends on petroleum revenues. Most of the country’s development program is financed with petroleum income. As a new country under the process of institutional building, Timor-Leste is racing between “curse and blessing.” Born in the modern century, Timor-Leste strives to ensure that income from natural resources must be turned to “blessing” by adopting existing international best practices. A sovereign fund so-called Petroleum Fund was established in 2005, aimed at managing funds prudently for sustainable use.
This endeavor can be considered as an institutionalization of natural resource income. For the sake of sustainability usage, Timor-Leste has set parameters about the maximum amount that can be withdrawn from the Petroleum Fund, investing in various forms including taking above the parameter to extract revenue from non-petroleum sectors. To achieve this goal, institutional performance is crucial. With a number of problems such as corruption, transparency, efficiency, and politics, the effectiveness of the institution's work is worth discussing through this study.