It's been a big development
p. 41 · Read in the full issue
year in the Samoas
From GLEN WRIGHT, in Apia Imagine a fish-filled lagoon, fenced off from the open sea with wire mesh. Imagine many of the lagoons around any coral shelved island so utilised. This is fish-farming, as proposed for Western Samoa by a Japanese fishery.
Minister of Agriculture Laufili me is excited at the prospect, fol ding a trip to Japan where he had en shown such farms in bays and ets. Some of the net-fenced areas i a mile square, where millions of h. are fed and raised for market, e principal fish is tagi, a bonito e fish which is also found in moa waters. They grow to four it long.
Fhe fishing company which wants venture here has suggested an tial investment of $W52,000,000. is would include four deep-sea ling vessels and a cooling plant at t and the lagoon “farms” later feasible.
Ts been like this in the Samoas year long—there have been pro wls for one business venture ;r another (but not all so exotic), ny have been approved and either e begun or will shortly. ieveral other entrepreneurs are nested in fishing, including the Government, which will not age in the industry but rather pare the way for private enter e. Its fishing project, conducted the crew of the Tautai A’e has n successful, says Fisheries 'elopment supervisor Richard loway. Fishing grounds have n discovered, vagaries of weather, , sea and market determined. lolloway says that a commercial ing fleet could start next year, be successful.
Apia cannery?
he Taisho Seimo Works Co. of m is seriously interested in ating a fish cannery in Apia, lager Y. Utumi has proposed to Department of Agriculture and cries an initial plant that would 3ly the local market first, to ; the country foreign exchange.
Y the surplus would be exported, he next move in negotiations is to Taisho Seimo, which will de according to the results of
a fish-count in waters around the islands it is now making.
Koreans want to get into the act, too. Jung Keum Oh, Korean Marine Industry Development Corporation, was in Pago recently to discuss establishment of a branch of its fishing enterprise there. Governor Owen Aspinall favored the proposal.
The Japanese like it in the Samoas, and do well at whatever they attempt.
One family has a 5,000 hen poultry farm producing 180 dozen eggs a month.
A joint Japanese-Western Samoa Timber Company started a sawmill this year at Leaufisa near Apia, It now employs half-dozen Japanese technicians and some 30 Samoans, and mills timber for building con struction and furniture, mostly for domestic use. A small amount goes to Japan {PIM, Jan., p. 124).
Specialised markets
A great deal of hardwood will be going to specialised markets all over the world next year when Potlatch Forests Inc. starts its logging and milling operations at Asau, on Savaii.
The Idaho, USA based timber com pany, which has been granted a franchise after three years of negotiations, is now winding up a long and delicate series of negotia tions with freehold landowners and Matais in charge of customary lands involved in the 160,000 acre. SUS 8,000,000 deal.
The envisioned treefarm will en compass more than one-fourth the area of the big island and employ hundreds to produce 50 million board feet of timber annually besides inspiring the inception of a town.
For the 181 acre millsite alone Potlatch will pay Savai’i islanders SUS 1,000 a year for the first 20 years and $2,000 a year for the next twenty.
Pago Pago, American Samoa, will be the time-piece centre of the Pacific next year when the watch repair and assembly plant of the US Sheffield
Watch Company starts operations.
Parts from Switzerland, West Germany and Japan will be as sembled into 800,000 watches a year and exported to the US ( PIM, Oct., P. 125).
The latest capital investment pro posal, other than hotels, also involves agriculture. Formal application has been made to the Western Samoa Enterprises Incentives Board by a group of New Zealand investors to establish a food processing factory.
To be called Marketing Manage ment Ltd., with John Carrack-Hope well as managing director, it would be capitalised at 5W527,500 to start, with one-third of the shares available to Western Samoans. Production the first year is envisaged at one and a half million cans. Rosebank Hold ings is chief shareholder, followed by Advertising Marketing, both of New Zealand. The venture has the New Zealand reserve bank’s approval to export the capital. Crops to be canned include pineapple, cashew and macadamia nuts, passionfruit, bananas and taro.
Controversy
Most current and eminent activity, however, concerns transport and tourism.
It’s announced that Fiji Airways is to buy into Polynesian Airlines and take over the management of Poly nesian, and the West Samoan Gov ernment is to take shares in both Fiji Airways and Polynesian (see p. 49).
Concomitant with all this has been a wave of hotel building proposals.
The Government of Western Samoa is trying to raise local money for a new one to replace its old, ramshackle Casino. It is holding in abeyance at least two applications for luxury resort hotels, one by Travelodge of Australia and another by an investor of Seattle, Washing ton, USA. The cabinet seems to favour the Washingtonian’s deal, having appointed a committee to negotiate with landowners for a site.
Intercontinental of Pago Pago plans to soon add more rooms, and there is persistent talk of three more resort hotels for Tutuila {PIM, Nov, P- 45).
Surface transport is also stepping up its pace. TTie Union steamship company has doubled its service from Auckland. Formerly it served the Samoas once a month with the SS Tofua. As of November 14 it added the SS Taveuni. Now one or the other is at the Apia dock every two weeks.