shipping

Islands' shipping problems

By a special correspondent

Shipping services between the s Islands and Australia and New v Zealand seem to be receiving increas- ing attention from governments in r the region nowadays.

What with a continual round of 5 freight increases allegedly contribut- ing to inflation in the countries and f political forces making shipping a r popular subject for politicians, the £ shipping companies serving the region r are probably hankering after the good £ old days of anonymity, when they \ simply carried the cargo and that was 8 it.

Tonga’s Pacific Navigation Com- pany has also taken a hammering over the past year; first it was operat- ing losses, at first denied and then r admitted; next it was the report com- missioned by PIPA from a Fiji firm r of auditors which concluded that the s Tongan line didn’t have the necessary \ operating accounts to enable it to c complete its report; while finally the s Tongan line was put in the embarrass- ing position of being the first line on r the Australia run to increase its rates. .

So much, said some, for a regional 1 line being able to hold down freight J rates.

In an interesting development J affecting the regional shipping line 3 proposal, the Adelaide-based firm of f consultants, P. G. Pak-Poy and £ Associates, who have been working § on a roads project in Western Samoa, f are understood to have been retained £ by the Western Samoa Government J to report on the country’s overseas z shipping situation.

The terms of reference are said to o include a preliminary study of the 3 prospects for a nationally-owned h Western Samoan shipping line. .; Whether the study sounds the death- knell of the proposed joint regional fj shipping line, which was to have been n based on the Tongan national line, is not at all clear.

The prospect now of Tonga, ,j Western Samoa and other island gov- ernments each running its own ships & in some form of co-operative venture 3 cannot be ruled out, however. .* Whether Western Samoa’s interest in n going it alone in the shipping field b

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