At Duty-Free
p. 135 · Read in the full issue
P-NG Looks At Duty-Free Possibilities
From a Port Moresby Correspondent How much would duty-free shops and free ports cost Papua-New Guinea revenue?
This is one of the ques tions being considered by a committee of investigation re cently set up in the Territory under the chairmanship of Mr.
R. L. Claringbould, a senior member of the Department of Trade and Industry, who has always taken an interest in P-NG tourist possibilities.
AN educated local guess is that the Treasury would be £5 million a year out of pocket although how anyone can even guess is hard to see.
At present P-NG has no real tourist industry, so that the people living here would be those most likely to benefit from duty-free goods.
As virtually all tourists now come to P-NG from or via Australia, a better plan might be to extend duty free privileges to them at the Aus tralian end. This would provide the gimmick without the Territory hav ing to lose any revenue at all. As things stand travellers to P-NG are singled out from all others and denied the use of duty-free shops in Australia. (See Graham Pople’s complaint in PIM, Dec., p. 135).
The reasons for this are obscure.
Goods brought into Australia from P-NG are dutiable and goods taken from Australia to P-NG are also dutiable —there is not and never has been any kind of Customs union be tween the two countries. Further more. travellers to the British Solomon Islands who go via P-NG are also barred from buying duty free goods before they leave.
At this stage of its tourist develop ment, an inquiry into duty-free facilities for P-NG seems too long range to make sense. One can also wonder how long it will be before the proliferating number of duty-free shops all over the world will cancel themselves out.
A few years ago Amsterdam and Shannon had the only such shops.
Now every country seems to have got into the act, and you can buy duty-free goods in several South Seas territories.
Mr. Russell Greene’S 21 Ft
cabin cruiser Moonraker II was expected to be in service on Norfolk Island from about Christmas for tourists wanting to try their hands at deep-sea fishing.
Mr. Greene will work in conjunc tion with Mr. Geoff Ryan, who runs a bus service, and who will carry intending passengers from their guest houses to the pier.
Moonraker II will be available for charter, and will carry all necessary equipment for deep-sea fishing.
Mr. William Drury, 45, A
British journalist, has been ap pointed to the new post of managing director of the Fiji Visitors Bureau from January 1. Mr. Drury, who served with the RAF in India, Ceylon and Burma and was demobilised with the rank of flight-lieutenant, is the author of a book, Chindit Column 76.
Since the war, he has worked on news papers in London, Trinidad, Hawaii and San Francisco, and for a news paper and publicity firm in Singapore.
Bureau secretary is Herb Marlow.
MR. KEN PRENTICE, the “Baron of Norfolk Island” (he is the island’s biggest businessman), is plan ning to build a new hotel on a 50acre site on Taylor’s Road, Norfolk Island. Mr. Prentice is also owner of the old Paradise Hotel, in Cascade Road, which, after alterations, is to be re-opened as the South Pacific Hotel.
IN an effort to attract more American tourists to American Samoa, the local government has decided that US citizens and nationals no longer need passports to visit the territory. All that Americans now require is proof of smallpox vaccina tion and onward transportation.
FIJI had 4,800 visitors last August —the first time the monthly total has topped the 4,000 mark. The number was 26 per cent, higher than in August, 1964, the previous record month.
In the first eight months of last year, the Colony had more than 25,000 visitors compared with just over 20,000 in the first eight months of 1964, They included nearly 7,000 from New Zealand, 5,800 from Aus tralia and 6,200 from the United States.