Business and Development

Boost For

Solomons

Cattle

In common with other Pacific territories, the British Solomon Islands is making strenuous efforts to improve its stagnant copra economy.

Agricultural economists have calcu lated that the greatest return on investment comes from a combina tion of cattle grazing under coconuts, and this fits in nicely with a country where cattle thrive, where there is almost unlimited land, and yet $i million is spent annually on imported meat.

Prewar there were considerable cattle herds in the Solomons, but these were almost completely lost, not only in the war itself, but in the subsequent years of slow rehabili tation when money and manpower were extremely short. No war damage compensation was paid in the Solomons.

In a Colonial Development and Welfare Scheme in 1951, a shipload of 50 head of cattle was imported from Fiji, but through inability to recruit veterinary staff, this small herd was soon dispersed and lost.

A more successful shipment of breeding cattle was organised in 1968 when Government imported from Queensland 310 head for private con cerns. To make up the full shipload, government also bought 90 head for resale at subsidised prices to Solomon Islands farmers. Levers, in the Russell Islands, have managed fairly well on their own to re-establish their cattle herds, but the fine herds in splendid condition that one sees grazing beneath the coconuts in the planta tions along the coast from Honiara these days are the result of this injection of aid.

Government also assists with fenc ing, stockyard and pasture subsidies, and the provision of veterinary and agricultural extension services. From there the Agricultural and Industrial

Loans Board takes over with as sistance in the form of rural credits.

The suitability of cattle in the Protectorate has been amply demon strated, but the demand for breeding stock cannot be met from local sources. The cattle population of the country is only 12,000 head—not much more than in prewar days— and the demand is such that very good prices were offered by Solomon Islands farmers for good-quality heifers at a recent cattle auction held by the Agriculture Department at Asai demonstration farm, believed to be the first cattle auction in the Solomons.

The importance of the industry is recognised in the Protectorate’s Sixth Development Plan. Planned expen diture over the years 1971-73 on livestock is $145,500 and in addition there is provision of $184,000 for subsidies on fencing, pastures and cattle importation. Aiming to increase the cattle population to 21,000 by the end of the decade, government will establish a breeding herd at Dodo Creek on the Guadalcanal plains, importing fresh stock each year of the plan and making available their progeny to commercial concerns on Guadalcanal and the Russell Islands, where there is land and the expert supervision to concentrate large sub

sidiary herds of breeding stock. These in turn will provide stock for the smaller herds scattered through the islands.

Land at Dodo Creek (near Tenaru), to which both Levers and Guadal canal Plains Ltd. have contributed, has been prepared for the breeding herd and sown with pastures of para and Guinea grasses mixed with cen trosema and siratro. A bore hole supplies water to drinking troughs in the five paddocks fenced so far.

To get the scheme going, the Aus tralian Government through its Australia-South Pacific Aid Pro gramme (ASPAP), has contributed 99 head of selected stock (the 100th escaped in Queensland), as the nucleus of the breeding herd, paying a total transport from Queensland to Honiara. The herd consists of four young Brahman bulls, six purebred Brahman heifers and 89 cross-bred heifers. The Brahman blood was chosen to give ruggedness and heat tolerance.

Selected and bought in Central Queensland by McTaggarts, the herd was trucked to Dalby on the Darling Downs, where each animal was

ASPAP cattle at Lunga stock yard.

inspected by government veterinary officers and the herd quarantined for six weeks. The Solomons are fortu nate in having no cattle tick or brucellosis, and the greatest care is being taken to preserve this state.

During their quarantine period, the cattle were sprayed four times against external parasites before being loaded in the Ida Clausen for the Solomons.

After a good trip during which there were no casualties the Ida Clausen arrived at Honiara on July 29, and in two hours the cattle were unloaded and trucked to the stock yards in Levers Lunga plantation.

Many islanders watched the unload ing at the wharf, and in return the Brahman bulls gave a lordly stare at the Solomons, In the stockyard each animal was checked by a veterinary officer, weighed and its eartag registration number recorded. For good measure the cattle were sprayed once more and then trucked to their new home at Dodo Creek, where they lost no time in tucking in to the green feed.

Since then they have thrived, put ting on weight and adjusting them selves to their new conditions without any trouble at all.

TonQQ bllllds

UD industry

£ makes n ' claim to be a n • 1 °“& a n D u , T. u , indu f ial natlo J’ But - sbe f IS bulldm ? up her secon( j ary industries, most of them very small? but all useful Occasionally there are trends to new industries all helping to boost local emSSnt and in many cases cut- Hna flown nn the hill for imnorts ting down on e r p .

There are also tendencies to ex- P a nd away from the traditional copra industry in the primary in dustry field. King Taufa ahau is taking a keen interest m industrial development. He personally helped to get a new cottage industry going.

New enterprises launched recently in Tonga include: • The manufacture of Oriental type hats; Rock melons for export or j am manufacture; 1 * rannJn ’ fartnrv at Tnnliki • annmg tactory at loullJa > INua ’ trrj , . • An a Ppeal for funds to estab lish a on f7 m . . • Breeding chickens for sale to focal poultrymen.

The canning factory is being built

by Polynesian Food Packers Ltd., of Suva ’ <> f which Melbourne business- Mr. Peter Warner is the prin cipaL Mr. Warner incidentally, has shown a lot of interest in business development in several Island pr mms rbieflv Fni w«t P m ™ ly FlJl ’ Western Samoa the cannery, expected to come into operation by May, 1972, has been designed to handle mackerel, taro and other vegetables . In 1970 , samples of mac kerel were supplied by Fathom Fisheries Ltd., of Haapai, to Polynesian Food Packers, and the canning experiment proved suc cessfub The company hopes to can six tons of mackerel a week during its first season in 1972.

The Fiji cannery has also packed Tongan taro and sample shipments sent to Tahiti were followed by big orders. When the Tonga cannery is in production taro growers will have a new outlet on their doorstep for their crop.

The Tonga cannery will have a staff G f U p to 50, mostly girls from tbe Ma ufonga area, Hat-making societies have been formed in Sopu, Vaini, Tatakamo tonga, Fua’amotu and Lapaha to

launch a new cottage industry making Oriental type hats from rat tan peel, mangrove and bamboo leaves. The hats, designed by the King, who got the idea on his tra vels, amalgamate features of hats worn by rice planters in Ceylon, China and Japan.

Apart from tourists, there is ex pected to be a steady demand for these hats from other Pacific Island ers who work outdoors. Arrange ments are in train to book orders from Fiji and Samoa. Should these prospective markets prove worth while, attempts will be made to de velop an export trade even further afield.

As with most cottage industries, capital outlay is small. All local raw materials, except rattan peel, are used. The domestic prices for the hats, varying according to the dia meter, are $2, $2.50, $3 and $3.50.

Rock melons, one of the tastiest of fruits, are being grown at Fasi, Fua’amotu and Matatoa in a pilot project started by the King to diversify agricultural exports and provide raw materials for light in dustry. Three varieties are being grown, Honeydew, exclusively for jam, and Hale’s Best and Heart of Gold for the local table and export.

Hale’s Best and Heart of Gold may be made into jam if they cannot be sold as fruit.

The village of Fua’amotu is al ready supplying jam for the Hahake area, and demand is exceeding sup ply. It may be possible to set up a small jam factory.

A small trial shipment of rock melon jam was sent to Sydney re cently in the Niuvakai, and should it tickle Aussie palates it will open up a big new market.

The Department of Agriculture had 86 per cent, success with hatch ing chickens from two new incu bators, and what pleased them most was that the chickens were all sold before they were bom. Should the demand remain as strong, more in cubators will be brought into opera tion. This will suit local poultry men who have to rely on getting day-old chicks from New Zealand.

Efforts are now being made to establish the honey industry. A com pany, Kintail Honey Tonga Ltd., has been formed, in which Tonga share holders will have a 52 per cent, in terest, while the remaining 48 per cent, will be held by the Ward fam ily, of Dannevirke, New Zealand.

According to the Director of Ag riculture, Mr. John Pitman, total capital investment required will be $T48,000 at the rate of $12,000 a year. Mr. Pitman expects a profit in the second year of operation, and

hopes that by the fifth year the com pany will be self-supporting.

Mr. Peter Warner has offered his services to the company as accoun tant-secretary.

Another recently-established en terprise, although not a commercial one, is an optical dispensary. The dispensary was made possible by the efforts of the Tamaki Lions Club, of Auckland. The equipment, all re conditioned to a nearly-new state, is worth about $T4,000. Firms in Australia and Britain sent to Tonga a large stock of spectacle frames and lenses, all obsolete lines as far as they were concerned, but still useful for Tonga. The dispensary is now a local industry; in the past spectacles had to be imported.

Exchange uncertainty

in the Islands

President Nixon’s decision to free the US dollar, apart from its im mediate effect in major metropoli tan countries, caused quite a few rip ples in Pacific territories. With buy ers of the variety of Islands produce uncertain in many cases about what they were likely to pay some mar kets came to a virtual standstill.

One commodity affected was cof fee. The coffee market in London virtually came to a standstill as buy ers found they could not get Aus tralian dollars to pay for it. In some other commodities buyers were pre pared to take a risk with forward orders, in the hope that moves in exchange rates would favour them.

Copra prices were also affected, but growers who sell to boards in their own territories were unlikely to be affected as their prices are virtually guaranteed. But copra suf fered another blow—also US “in spired”. This was the longshoremen’s strike along the US west coast. This, in fact, had a more adverse effect on copra prices than the “floating” dollar.

In our produce prices, on page 103, the exchange rate between the Australian and the US dollars has been omitted because of the fluctu ating rate of the US dollar. Before the crisis it had been at SUSI.I2 to the SAI. The rate of the Pacific franc in relation to several other currencies has also been omitted as the French Bank in Sydney was un able to quote firm rates late in August the rate was varying from day to day.

Common Market

threat to sugar

An excellent year 1970-71 for both profit and production for the CSR Co’s subsidiary in Fiji, South Pacific Sugar Mills Ltd. is tempered by a warning of a potential danger to the free market if Britain goes into the Common Market. Fiji at present sells 140.000 tons of sugar to the UK under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement. Although this agreement will probably expire at its due date, 1974 (after Britain is in the EEC on present indications), Fiji will pro bably retain that quota as a develop ing country.

Britain and the EEC during negotiations about Britain’s entry, agreed that the enlarged EEC would have a “firm purpose” of safeguard ing the interests of developing countries, whose economies depended to a considerable extent on primary products, and sugar in particular.

That would appear to take care of 140.000 tons; but what of the remainder of Fiji’s sugar production which, in the year ended March 31, 1971, was 355,147 tons of sugar (from a record 2,840,395 tons of cane), the second highest mill pro duction on record.

Fiji’s quota in the US is just under 40.000 tons, which will leave, in a season as good as 1970-71, about 175.000 tons to sell. Fiji at present

Commerce supported the selection of this crowned Tongan beauty—l8-year-old Tupou Tuita, winner of the Miss Tonga contest at Nukualofa on August 20. Her prizes included a flight to Auckland and back, a two weeks' holiday in New Zealand and $100 spending money. She is the daughter of the Tonga Minister of Lands. Second prizewinner was 16-year old Melenaite Finau with Tupoumoheo Tupou in third place.

exports about 40 per cent, of her production to world markets under the protection of the international sugar agreement. She needs an as surance that she will still have this protected outlet, but there is small comfort on this aspect of sugar marketing in the British Government White Paper’s reference to the inter national sugar agreement.

Unlike the virtual guarantee of a continuance of CSA quotas, it is not the firm purpose of an enlarged EEC to preserve an effective International Sugar Agreement. Reasonable world market prices are of vital importance to Fiji, Should the EEC decide to expand beet sugar production members of the ISA would be hard hit. Inciden tally, so would the pockets of the consumers, for beet sugar is a high cost product.

Comments the SPSM board in the company’s report: “It would be a tragedy if British entry to the EEC were to result in such expansion of unwanted production as to destroy all that has been done since 1968, through the International Sugar Agreement, to achieve reasonable world market sugar prices. The British Government and the EEC have a clear responsibility to see that this is not allowed to happen. The Inter national Sugar Council and govern ments of sugar exporting countries have the responsibility of continuing to press the EEC and the British Government to ensure that it does not happen.”

SPSM’s net profit for 1970-71 was $1,787,692. The proceeds from the sale of sugar were the second highest on record and were exceeded only

in 1963, when world sugar prices went sky high. In 1970-71 profits and pro duction were much higher than allowed for in the “basis estimate” in the Denning award, and the profit was better than expected. Present indica tions are that sales for the current year (which ends on March 31, 1972) may not be much less than 1970-71. However increased costs, and in particular increased wages costs, are likely to absorb a greater part of SPSM’s share of the sale proceeds than in 1970-71.

SPSM and the CSR Co. have entered into a services agreement covering the provision of a number of services, including the secondment of CSR Co. staff. TTie agreement be came effective on March 31, 1971.

The CSR Co. will transfer its shares in SPSM Ltd. to the Fiji Gov ernment on April 1, 1973.

The CSR Co. Ltd. has made a break with tradition with the appoint ment of Mr. R. G. Jackson, 47, to succeed Sir James Vernon as general manager on July 1, 1972. Mr. Jack son is not a chemist, as was Sir James, and also Sir James’ pre decessor, Dr. R. W. Harman. Several other top CSR men will retire at the same time as Sir James—Messrs. J.

M. Dixon, K. O. Brown and P. T.

Wheen, all deputy general managers, and all well-known in Fiji.

Hotel group goes

into Pacific

Another powerful financial group is moving into the hotel field in the Pacific Islands, the newly-formed Australian-based Asian Pacific Inter national Pty. Ltd., which announced in Sydney during August that it plan ned to set up a chain of hotels in New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Cook Islands, New Cale donia, New Hebrides, the Solomons and in Asia.

The company plans to design, build, manage and market new and existing hotels and motels and mould them into a vast network.

Head of the consortium is Mr. D.

H. H. McCarron, who founded the Australia-wide Koala motel chain operated by Australian Motel Indus tries Ltd. Other directors are Mr. A.

Pereira, member of a Sydney firm of architects which designed the new Kingsgate project at the Top of the Cross in Sydney, and Mr. T. C. Rowe, deputy chairman and managing direc tor of Trans Australian Securities Ltd., a Perth-based property, develop ment, mining and investment com pany. An expected addition to the

board is Mr. Donald Pruss, of the Pruss Corporation in Los Angeles.

Designs have already been pre pared for a $2 million 150-room beach hotel at Somosomo on Fiji’s Coral Coast and other Fiji projects will include a 150-room hotel on the Queens Road outside the Nadi Inter national Airport, and a 100-room motel at Deuba.

Present plans include two hotels in New Guinea, one on the harbour front in Port Moresby, and the other in the Murray area.

A site on Noumea’s Baie des Cit rons is also being considered and it is expected that a small hotel in Vila will be remodelled and enlarged as another of the consortium’s projects.

A motel which is being built by an other company in the Solomons will be managed by the new company.

Asian Pacific International Pty.

Ltd. intends that each project will be financed mainly from inside the host country. The three hotels planned for Fiji, for instance, will be financed from United States sources and by three banks with branches in Fiji.

The Tonga Tourist and Develop ment Co. Ltd. is planning to build a Polynesian-style hotel in Vuna Road, Nukualofa, which will be bigger than the International Dateline.

The first stage provides for 50 double rooms with another 50 at a later stage and amenities will include a conference room.

Building, which will begin as soon as government approval is given, will be by the Australian-based firm of D.

G. Sundin and Co., which is building the Tonga Tourist and Development Co.’s Port of Refuge Hotel at Neiafu, Vavau.

Oil well or just

wartime waste?

Tonga Oil Participants is to start drilling an exploratory oil well late in September or early in October at the same time as Tonga is trying to fathom what caused an oil seepage at Nukualofa, opposite the British Residency about the middle of July.

A sample of the seepage has been sent to Europe for analysis but as Tonga has to take its place in the queue while many other samples are analysed no early answer is expected.

An oil expert warned that the see page was nothing to get wildly excited about. As Tonga does not have a stock exchange frenzied dealing in shares was non-existent.

The oil seeped into pools in the rocks uncovered by the tide. Grass and soil behind the sea wall were soaked in oil.

According to Mr. A. Jackson, of Tonga Oil Participants, the seepage

would be of old sump oil, which had either been spilt on the ground, or buried even a long distance from the shore. He had heard that the US forces had dumped a large quantity of oil somewhere on the island before they left during World War 11.

Mr. Jackson offered a second theory that the seepage could be natural oil from beneath the lime stone and that it was being forced up by rising rainwater.

Boosters for

W. Samoa's economy

New Zealand is helping to boost Western Samoa’s economy with aid worth SWS2OO,OOO spread over three years in the form of technical as sistance, grants for civil aviation and meteorological services and the con tinuation of the present scholarship and in-service training scheme.

Added to that is an annual capital grant of $120,000 for economic de velopment. Technical assistance worth $64,000 is also coming from the Asian Development Bank to carry out a full feasibility study of the country’s future electricity needs and power-supply methods.

The Asian Development Bank is also helping the beef cattle industry with a loan of $U5330,000 at only H per cent, interest a year to pro duce good quality breeding stock.

Multi-million dollar

project for Gogol

The PNG Government and a Japanese company, Japan New Guinea Timbers Co. Ltd. have sign ed an agreement in Tokyo for the development of the timber area in the Gogol forests near Madang which will earn $4.75 million a year, mainly in wood chips.

Annual production will be 340,000 tons of wood chips, 80 million sq. ft of veneers and 7 million sup. ft of sawn timber. Most of the output will be exported to Japan but some sel ected timbers will be marketed else where.

The company is expected to em ploy nearly 1,400 locals.

PNG BUDGET. Hoping to raise an extra $4 million in a total budget of $l9B million, PNG’s treasurer, Mr. H. P. Ritchie announced, when presenting the 1971-72 Budget on September 1, that company tax would rise by 2i per cent, and motor vehicle registration fees by 50 per cent. Beer will cost 2c more a middy, and cigarettes 2c to 3c more a packet.