salesmanship

A neat piece of NZ salesmanship

In July, New Zealand came on mighty strong in Fiji. In a master piece of apparent coincidence, the NZ Government timed its $2 million aid for Fiji announcement to co incide with New Zealand Trade Week, when 60,000 people converged on the new Suva Town Hall to see pop and cultural shows and a display of products representing 150 companies.

His government’s commitment to consolidating trade relationships with the dominion was evinced by the presence during Trade Week of NZ Minister for Overseas Trade, Mr Brian Talboys, who held high-level discussions with Fiji Government ministers, including the Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara.

Mr Talboys announced details of projected New Zealand aid expendi ture exceeding $25 million in the South Pacific during the next three years. In the 1972/73 financial year alone, he said, New Zealand’s direct assistance to the Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau Islands, Western Samoa, Fiji and Tonga should be more than 59.5 million.

Over the next three years, direct bilateral assistance to Fiji should ex ceed $2 million. Western Samoa would receive more than S 3 million and Tonga about $1 million. Regional assistance, including aid to the Uni versity of the South Pacific, contri butions to the South Pacific Com mission, the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Co-operation and regional civil aviation and health assistance programmes would amount to an additional $2 million.

Help to Fiji this year, he said, would include a major survey by NZ consulting engineers of the potential for hydro-electric development in Viti Levu; the designing of a new central abattoir for the Suva area; assistance in developing a forest industry at Kubuna and various village water supply schemes and the provision of technical experts in fields as diverse as telecommunications, statistics and bovine mastitis control.

Questioned about the $7 million trade gap between New Zealand and Fiji, Mr Talboys said New Zealand’s prime interest was the development of trade with Fiji and the region, rather than “to seek any particular bilateral balance”. He spoke, how ever, of the possibility of New Zea land buying more sugar from Fiji (NZ currently buys 30,000 tons of

Fiji sugar annually) and urged a joint approach by South Pacific nations in negotiations next year with the Euro pean Common Market.

He foreshadowed new trade pat terns in the South Pacific with his suggestion of a trade and economic association between the Island nations and Australia and New Zealand.

Further study of regional trade re quirements, he said, could lead to some modification of the New Zea land-Australia Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), Meanwhile, the 150 companies represented at the trade display in Suva appeared to be enjoying a boom week, though some exhibitors com plained that hordes of schoolchildren descending like swarms of locusts on free samples and give-aways inhibited efforts to write new business. (Local initiative gave rise to a new line in Suva market souvenirs—Kiwi shaped lapel pins and plastic carry bags given away at the trade display were being sold by curio vendors for five and 10 cents!) Several companies—including W.

Sutherland and Co, tanners and general merchants of Auckland, and manufacturing chemists, W. T. Raw leigh Co. Ltd of Wellington— reported breaking new ground in Fiji and declared themselves more than satis fied with local potential.

“This was our first attempt to break into the Fiji market—although we already export as far afield as Hong Kong, Singapore and the Arab states, said Mr N. A. Garratt general manager of W. T. Rawleigh!

“Vitamins are our most popular line We exported 100,000 vitamin C tablets to Arabia in one shipment alone! Fiji mightn’t have quite the same appetite for vitamins, but there’s been strong interest in a number of our products. The exercise has definitely been worth while.”

Mr Robert Bennett, industrial manager for W. Sutherland and Co, said his company had previously ex ported leather to Fiji, but it appeared that the local populace now had sufficient spending power to justify export to the dominion of other lines, such as sporting footwear and lambswool products.

I found that local importers tended to compare our prices with Australian products and this may mean that we have to make some adjustments. However, we’ll de fini ely make money out of this trip ”

Mr Bennett said.

Companies already established on the Fiji market reported new interest from previously untapped outlets, largely Indian traders, and Trade Week organisers have predicted a

significant increase in New Zealand exports to Fiji during the next 12 months. Fiji’s imports from down south totalled $10.4 million last year.

Even company representatives, who make frequent business trips to Fiji, discovered a completely new demand for their products. Mr John Edwards, export manager for Cadbury Fry Hudson Ltd, visits the dominion at least once every three months: “1 was amazed at the number of new orders I received from people I’d never met before, mostly from centres outside Suva,” he told PIM. “Not just potential clients, but clients placing orders on the spot. I had seven very

good orders on a single day. Fiji is already our best Pacific Island market, but future business looks even better.”

For companies like Spurway Cooper Industries Ltd, Auckland suppliers of Cooper louvres and domestic hardware, the point of the exercise was not so much to reach local outlets but to create increased consumer demand.

“There’s a tendency in Fiji, perhaps more than anywhere else, for agents to place orders only on demand and then only to the amount of the in dividual order,” said Mr Harold Bott, the company’s sales manager. “Most Fiji people don’t know what’s avail

able through local suppliers. After the trade display, they’ll be asking for specific products and that should encourage the suppliers to keep these products in stock and order in greater volume.”

Among the most interested ob servers at the New Zealand Trade Week were members of the Australian Trade Commission, who had to admit that the Australian trade display mounted in Suva last year suffered by comparison in at least one respect.

“In terms of the value of orders actually placed, I doubt whether the New Zealand effort will have ex ceeded ours,” commented one official.

“But as a public relations exercise, with significant consumer impact.

New Zealand Week showed us a thing or two.”

Few achievements

for FIFA

Bananas were quite high on the priority list when the Pacific Islands Producers’ Association (PIPA) held its conference at Rarotonga in June

—important, maybe, because negotiat

ing two price increases for the Islands bananas was about all that PIPA had achieved.

But, the member countries, Fiji, Western Samoa, the Cook Islands, Tonga, GEIC and Niue, decided against killing off PIPA, which was confidently expected by many, and gave it a three-year reprieve, not be cause of its success with banana prices, but because it has become in volved in other aspects of regional trade like marketing, shipping, bulk purchasing and copra. Besides, with out PIPA, GEIC and little Niue would be out in the cold.

They’re not eligible yet for enjoying the good offices of the South Pacific Bureau of Economic Co-operation, the South Pacific Forum’s set-up for its independent members.

Niue wasn’t very interested in bananas, although some delegates were fascinated over Fiji Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara’s account of how the Coffs Harbour growers wrap their growing fruit in “Cellophane” bags. Niue only ex ported 72 cases to> New Zealand last year—all for Niueans who, in exile, wanted to keep in touch with their homeland through its bananas.

PIPA had had a plan for the bulk purchase of fertilisers. Delegates found it still-born and blamed PIPA’s executive secretary, Mr H. P. Elder, who hadn’t made a report about feasibility reports. He defended him self. He hadn’t made a report be cause there was nothing to report

about it. Mr Doug Brown, Fiji’s Minister of Agriculture, thought a report should have been made, even a negative one.

Western Samoa grumbled because expensive fertilisers had considerably reduced profits, and it wasn’t getting the technical advice it needed.

There were other grumbles. A regional shipping line didn’t look very promising, copra prices were still fall ing, but members decided to press on and launch a drive for new markets for such products as desiccated coco nut, coconut meal for livestock, coconut fibre and margarine to lessen the cost of butter imports.

It was an important meeting merit ing the attendance of the Prime Ministers of Fiji, Tonga and Western Samoa and the Cooks Premier, but not a very successful one. Maybe the next one, in Apia in April next year, will be brighter.

Second nickel

factory for NC

Plans to build a second nickel factory in New Caledonia were dis cussed in Noumea mid-July by General Rene Leveque, President of the Patino Corporation.

After the breakdown in talks last December between Patino and the SLN, Patino’s French subsidiary COFREMMI has worked out a new project with the French group Pechiney-Ugine Kuhlmann. Since further European partners were being sought, the Swedish Grangesberg could also enter the project.

The new factory is planned for the north of the island, around Koumac, 250 miles from Noumea, on the west coast. An electrical process is to be used on rich, three per cent, deposits of garnieritic ore.

Production will be 36,000 tons of ferro-nickel annually, with output scheduled to begin in mid-1975. A name for the new venture has yet to be decided.

Skimming cream

from land sales

With the idea of curbing the land speculators, who have made big money out of Fiji’s zooming land values, and keeping for the Fiji people some of the cream coming from such speculation, the Fiji Gov ernment has produced some retro spective land sales tax legislation.

“A good thing,” said most people when the draft of the bill—the Land Sales Tax Act 1972—was published in June, but there were also some pretty influential doubters, among them the Fiji Law Society. No-one in Fiji quarrels with the government’s

main idea but there are fears that it might cause an even bigger price spiral which will hit, not only the speculator, but the little man wanting his small plot for a home as sales tax usually lands on the shoulders of the buyer.

In its present form, say the critics, shareholders in land-holding com panies might find themselves saddled with a tax burden for income miles removed from any speculating adven tures at which the bill is really aimed.

The legislation, which imposes tax ranging from 35 per cent, to 50 per cent, of profits made from the sale of certain categories of land, is directed largely at the speculator. It also imposes controls over transfer of land to non-residents.

Commenting on the objects of the Bill, Attorney-General Mr J. N.

Falvey, said land speculation activity in Fiji had pushed up the price of land and was having a serious effect on the economy, A number of people engaged in recent transactions were non-residents of Fiji and the govern ment felt the time was ripe to im pose measures of control over such transactions.

“The provisions of the existing Income Tax Ordinance are not wide enough to allow tax to be charged on these transactions, because in many cases the profits arising are capital profits rather then income,”

Mr Falvey said. The new legislation would enable tax to be charged on these profits.

The government had no objection to proper development taking place but it sought to deter people from letting land lie undeveloped for a considerable time, then selling it at a considerable profit.

The bill provides that profits from land sales (unless such dealings come under the provisions for exemption) will be taxed at the “appropriate rate”—so per cent, on land owned for not more than 3 years; 45 per cent, on land owned between 3-10 years and 35 per cent, on land owned for 10 years or more. Land which has been in continuous ownership since 1960 and has not been the subject of agricultural development is exempt from sales tax.

BSIP's 'little' men's

copra record

Copra produced by Solomons co operatives, small holdings and village producers reached an all-time record last year of 14,332 tons, 2,933 tons more than that produced on planta tions. The total produced by co-ops and village producers made up more than half the Solomons total record tonnage.

Small holdings in the Western District contributed over 6,000 tons, while plantations in the area pro duced just over 1,000 tons. In the Central District, plantations produced over 9,500 tons, to just over 4,000 tons by small holdings. Production of copra by small holdings has been rising steadily since 1960.

Co-op's good year

The Nano - Lelei Co-operative Society in the GEIC made a profit of $72,500 in 1971 on a turnover of $590,000 an increase of $lOO,OOO on the previous year’s sales. Of the total

profit, $42,000 was put to reserves leaving $30,000 for distribution.

Prawn search

in Solomons

The Honiara-based Coral Seas Fish ing Company will conduct a further survey of prawn fishing in Solomon waters.

Last year the company did a survey during October and November and found several varieties of commercial prawns. However, they also found that it was not the right time of the year to catch prawns.

The company’s director Mr, Bayard

Fox said the survey will be carried out a few nights a month, until freezer equipment is installed in the company vessel Sorengana. This will free another company vessel, the Compass Rose for survey purposes.

If enough prawns are found to make the business profitable, the company will seek overseas markets. . ”, • Polynesian Airlines have raised the sir feire Apis/Psgo P&go from $lO to sll, and the Apia/Nadi fare from $45.10 to 550.70. Meanwhile Air New Zealand now has an excursion fare of $170.70 return between Apia and Auckland for trips of six to 30 days.