Things Are Really Moving
p. 34 · Read in the full issue
In The Solomons
Prom a Honiara correspondent The Solomons are on the move. Developments, big and small, are changing Honiara, the protectorate’s capital, and also affecting many of the outer islands.
Retail and wholesale business is picking up, with the local Chinese taking a bigger part. Increased air services to Fiji, direct turbo-jet air services to Port Morseby and an in ternal airstrip building programme are all adding to hopes for a sizeable tourist industry.
Hotels, taxis, firewood supplies, dry-cleaning services, bus runs, new stores and mineral search operations —they have all given the Solomons a flying start into 1969.
The partly-successful rice produc ing scheme, the growing cattle in dustry and the recently-achieved 100 tons a year of cocoa production have convinced many locals that a healthier and more diversified economy might be near after all.
The developments include: • The British Solomon Islands Trading Company, the protectorate’s largest trader, put $lO,OOO into a new refrigeration plant at Honiara and then pledged $25,000 to build a combined garage and showroom in the town.
After several years “walking along” the company has recently declared that it has a “new face” and is about to “trot”, Indications are that it’s about to adopt more aggressive busi ness operations.
First pub at Gizo
• A 12-bed hotel at Gizo, Western Solomons, the centre’s first pub, has opened. It’s owned by Mr. Chang Pong, of Wing Sun Company. • A taxi-truck service, operated by A. J. and G. Blum Ltd., has started in Honiara with two vehicles and a charge of $1 an hour. • A firewood supply business, run by Mr. David Thuguvoda, president of the Guadalcanal Council, with the help of E. V. Lawson Pty. Ltd., has started in Honiara. Previously fire wood requirements for the town were supplied by the prison, but this source ended last year. • Kilakana Plantations, Honiara, has applied for a mining lease of about 126 acres in the Gold Ridge
area of Guadalcanal, and Inter national Nickel Southern Exploration Ltd. has applied for a special pros pecting licence over 74,240 acres on Isabel and San Jorge Islands. • A new company, LAL General Merchants, has taken a five-year lease on the British Solomons Islands Trading Company’s Medana Avenue branch store. LAL’s aims are to operate a general store. • The protectorate’s Lands and Survey Department is setting up a SI 5,000 topographical mapping division in Honiara to make avail able highly-accurate aerial maps of all Solomon Islands. • Guadalcanal Bus Service, which carried 133,426 passengers in and around Honiara in the last six months of last year, will import a new 39seat bus in June. • A passenger - taxi service, operated by Mr. Peter Rachenberg in Honiara, is now running on a seven days a week schedule. Charges: 25 cents for the first mile, 10 cents for additional miles.
Hydro-electric project
• The World Bank, with an “appraisal mission”, has taken a close look at the proposed Lungga River hydro-electric project. The three-man team followed up recommendations made by an economic mission last year. Word is the only stumbling block could be the “credit-worthiness” of the Solomons, not the actual feasibility of the project. • Geological mapping, the build ing of a district centre and a new air strip are all on hand in the isolated Santa Cruz Group. • The much talked-about Honiara Technical Institute opened in late January with initial enrolment of 150 students to learn everything from agriculture to seamanship. • Locals firms, the Chung Com pany and A. J. and G. Blum, have combined in an application to operate a dry-cleaning service in Honiara.
They are after tax concessions under
the Protected Industries Ordinance and if their application succeeds, Chung will do the cleaning while Blum will handle deliveries and pick ups. • Work has begun on two senior primary schools on Malaita. They are at Faumamanu and Masupaa.
All that is not to say everything is roses in the Solomons. Australia’s Amax Bauxite Corporation won’t proceed with its application to pros pect for bauxite over 37,000 acres of Santa Cruz because, the corporation says, bauxite contents located were “too low”.
In addition, the internal airline, Solair, has failed with its ambitious hopes to start a weekly air service from the Solomons to Kieta, Bougainville.
The decision not to let Solair go ahead with the new service was made by the protectorate’s Air Licensing Authority. In one way it was a victory for Australia’s Trans- Australia Airlines, which operates a Solomons-New Guinea air service al ready. In another way it was only a consolation prize for TAA since that company’s protests about Fiji Airways current Fiji-Solomons-NG services were ignored. The new Fiji Airways services are going to hurt TAA operations in this area.