Business and Development

Effort to prop up Cook's ailing agriculture

From W. H. Percival,

in Rarotonga.

The backbone of the Cook Islands’ economy, agriculture, has been creaking alarmingly during the last decade, and it seems to some that the death rattle is not far off. But the Cook Islands Government is putting up a determined fight to keep the Cooks’ agriculture alive—even though the agriculture working force has dropped to a frightening level.

During the last 10 years Cook Islands’ planters have been hit with hurricanes and insect pests, marketing and shipping problems and perhaps most important, the drift of the population from agriculture to industry.

There is no industry worthy of the name in the Cook Islands. But there is a strong population drift from the outer islands to Rarotonga, and from there to New Zealand.

Families from the outer islands stay in Rarotonga until sufficient funds are received from their relalives in NZ for them to buy one-way tickets to New Zealand. This is a pattern that was established long before

internal self-government in 1965, but the pattern continues and develops as more air passages become available.

In New Zealand the Cook Islands emigrants have relatives and friends who will help them with accommoda tion until they can find a job, most of which pay, conservatively, four or five times more than they could ever hope to earn in Rarotonga.

Fresh food in NZ is plentiful, more varied and cheaper than can be ob tained in the Cook Islands. There are better schooling facilities for their children, and wider horizons. It is a new and exciting life with wide pos sibilities limited only by the im migrant family’s ability to adapt to the strange conditions and its capacity for work.

The fact that most Cook Islanders in New Zealand become factory workers or menial workers does nothing to lessen their image of New Zealand as the “Promised Land”.

The 1973 Cook Islands budget speech mentioned that 10 years ago 60 per cent of the active Cooks’ popu

lation was engaged in agriculture, that five years ago this figure had dropped to 40 per cent and that the preliminary results of the recent cen sus showed a frightening low of only 24 per cent.

In Rarotonga, according to the same source, the change was even more dramatic, in spite of the gov ernment’s past generous schemes of assistance to agriculturists.

The budget speech said: “All this had taken place as a result of a com bination of factors too numerous to enumerate and analyse here.” True, no doubt, but some of the factors stick out like red stop lights.

They are the alarming and increas ing rise in the cost of living, passed on to the Cooks from New Zealand which provides the bulk of the food and consumer commodities, plus in creased freight rates and increased costs of fertilisers and chemical sprays.

Another is the highly discouraging fact that prices paid for Cooks’ cit rus, bananas and pineapples have re mained constant, while costs of pro duction have mounted to the point where numbers of planters were considering abandoning agriculture for some more lucrative line of busi ness. The Cooks Government tried unsuccessfully to get better prices in New Zealand.

On top of this Cook Islands planters suffer from an acute labour shortage during harvesting periods (over)

due to the population drift to New Zealand. For some years past, the only citrus and banana planters who have beaten the labour shortage are those with large families. They put their families to work, including the children, thus breaking one of the Cooks’ numerous laws, the one for bidding the use of child labour.

The coup de grace for the despair ing food producers must have been the recent five per cent import levy tax which includes everything im ported into the Cook Islands, plus the new income tax law that hits everybody, especially those in the lower income group. The new tax law, which became effective on Janu ary 1 this year, abolished the former copra, welfare, pearl shell and export produce taxes, and drastically re duced special exemptions, hitting married men with large families to support. (Former tax exemptions of S4OO personal allowance, $4OO wife allowance, and $lOO for each child were abolished, as was that on life insurance).

When copra prices fell some months ago the production of Cooks’ copra fell with them. The copra pro ducers of the northern islands felt that the prices they received were just not worth the effort involved, especi ally with the new tax charges. In an effort to keep the industry alive, the Cooks Government subsidised the price so that local producers received not less than $6O per ton. Since then, copra prices have improved and it’s expected that the Cooks’ copra pro duction will rise accordingly.

In early April the Government an nounced its plans to help and encour age the struggling growers. The main points of the programme are: • A big prize incentive pro gramme for citrus, banana and pine apple growers. The prizes range from $4OO to $25 and are in the form of planting material awarded on the basis of the best kept plots and pro duction. • A free pest control spray ser vice provided by the Agriculture De partment. New Zealand financial help will largely meet this cost. • The provision of free citrus

seedlings and banana planting

material to growers. Again NZ will

help.

• A government subsidy of 0.4 cent per lb for citrus produced this year, effective from April 6. • $20,000 in loans will be made available to growers from the Economic Development Fund.

It is estimated that citrus pro duction for 1973 will be 139,000 cases. Aid to growers, direct and in direct, will amount to over a quarter million dollars this year.

Growing, and

aspiring

Growing unobtrusively and, per haps, aspiring to become a regional airline is Air Melanesiae, owned by New Hebrides Airways and UTA-Air France. The airline came into exis tence in 1960 as New Hebrides Air ways, operating a small Rapide. Lay ing its own airstrips on a number of islands it extended its services and now operates four Britten-Norman Islanders and recently added a Tris lander to the fleet.

The Trislander is on the Vila- Santo and Vila-Tanna services, on regular schedules. It is capable of carrying 17 passengers, but on flights to Santo the number is cut to 15 be cause it carries baggage over water.

Unfortunately, the Trislander soon af ter it was introduced to the service was affected by bans against French aircraft and shipping transport with fewer people going to the New Hebrides.

However, this is a temporary situ ation, and when normal conditions re turn it is conceivable Air Melanesiae will look at the possibility of buying another Trislander because it firmly be lieves that if aircraft are available they will generate traffic. Anyway, the New Hebrides people are air travel-minded, and Air Pacific and UTA-Air France call at Vila with passengers for most parts of the condominium.

The airline feels that the New' Hebrides is the best air-serviced archi pelago in the Pacific. It employs seven pilots and has a staff of more than 40, which is growing as the airline grows. Many of the ground support staff are New Hebrideans.

Air Melanesiae services now cover Vila, Santo, Malekulu, Aoba, Pente

cost, Erromanga, Tongoa, Anaityum and Tanna. A new service will soon be opened to the Banks’ Group.

The airline is a good example of Anglo-French co-operation. The in terests in the part-owner, New Hebri des Airways, are Qantas, BOAC, Burns Philp, Mr and Mrs R. Paul, a nursing sister and some New Hebri deans. The New Hebrideans were of fered a share each time a strip was laid. Mr Paul is chairman of Air Melanesiae.

Japanese 'front'

in Saipan

A Micronesian corporation, South Park Hotel Corp, is a “front” for direct Japanese investment, according to a finding by the Ponape District Economic Development Board. The board, after an inquiry, recommended revocation of the work permit for the hotel and of the entry permit of Japanese national Koshizawa Takuro.

The company contended that be tween $lOO,OOO and $200,000 Takuro invested in the hotel was a gift, “with absolutely no special condition or strings attached”. It was not a loan and not foreign investment where Takuro sought any form of return or claimed ownership.

The board found, however, that Takuro’s investment did have “strings”. The company should have secured the appropriate permits to do business as a foreign corporation.

The company officials had admitted that Takuro was manager of the cor poration, but said he had been given the position in consideration for his “goodwill”.

The board also contended that Takuro’s investment was in breach of Trust Territory law, and the com

pany had “aided, abetted, encouraged, permitted and conspired with” Takuro in breach of the law.

At present it is TT Government policy to allow foreign investment only by US citizens under the “most favoured nation” clause of the trustee ship agreement.

No future

tor PI PA

The Pacific Islands Producers As sociation (PIPA) has just about exhausted its usefulness and will close in a year. By then its functions will have been absorbed by the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Co-operation (SPEC), created by the South Pacific Forum.

PIPA recently held its eighth session at Apia when it reviewed the present position of the banana and coconut industries. It noted, “with concern”, that unless a substantial price in crease was secured for bananas, future production in the Islands was in jeopardy. The interests of PIPA members at the probe into the operations of Fruit Distributors Ltd in New Zealand, will now be watched by SPEC. SPEC will try to get a price giving sufficient inducement to growers to stay in the banana industry.

PIPA will probably ask the British Overseas Development Administra tion for help to investigate setting up a regional copra crushing mill, and the prices it could offer to producers.

The Apia meeting also discussed a number of other matters for primary producers, including inter island shipping, bulk purchasing and quarantine regulations. SPEC is already investigating some of these matters. SPEC will be asked to give

Air Melanesiae's new Trislander stretches its wings over the waterways of Vila.

high priority to these issues as they are of vital importance to regional trade.

PIPA was formed in 1964 mainly because of dissatisfaction in several groups at the poor prices they were getting from Fruit Distributors Ltd, which has the sole NZ rights to import and distribute fresh citrus fruits, bananas and pineapples from the Islands.

Late that year a Fiji delegation visited New Zealand to negotiate prices and quotas with Fruit Dis tributers Ltd. Fiji’s then Member for Natural Resources, Ratu K. K. T.

Mara, soon discovered there was a need for closer co-operation among the Island groups supplying fruit to New Zealand.

From there it was but a step to Western Samoa to discuss co-opera tion. Fiji and Western Samoa set up the Pacific Islands Produce Secre tariat, which was soon renamed Pacific Islands Producers Associa tion. Membership grew to six—Fiji, Western Samoa, Tonga, Cook Islands, Niue and the GEIC. PIPA will cancel itself out at a session, its last, on Niue in June, 1974.

When the question of PIPA’s demise was first considered, there were protests that the interests of two members, Niue and the GEIC, not being eligible for membership of the Forum, would be affected, but it’s now likely that by June, 1974, both will be able to join the Forum.

In any case, the Forum has promised that SPEC’s services will be avail able to all Island territories.

The dear good

life in PNG

In Papua New Guinea one pays for one’s pleasures these days. The customs duty on grog and smokes has gone up twice since 1971, the last time in the so-called mini-bud get introduced at the June meeting of the House of Assembly.

Even imbibers of instant tea and coffee will pay more. Strangely, for a country that produces excellent varieties of both brews, the instant and prepackaged imports are very popular. They were duty free but the duty is now 10 per cent ad valorem.

But if PNG residents drink any thing harder they will really be hit to leg. Sparkling wines which two years ago had a duty of $4.50 a gal lon now attract a duty of $6.50. Still wines which were 50c a gallon are now $2.50; beer has gone up from $1.15 per gallon to $2, and if you are misguided enough to drink Sake or Samshu that exceeds the strength of proof, then what was $5.60 in

1971 now attracts duty of $9.10.

Spirits, dutiable at $l4 per gallon in 1971. are $18.50 and for cigarettes at $4.03 now read $7.18 per lb.

Pre-European Papua New Guinea doesn’t seem to have had anything alcoholic or soporific in the drink line—no coconut toddy, no bush beer, no yaqona (or kava). Betel-nut chewing, once much more prevalent than it is today, had about the same effect as kava but for moderns it is an unattractive habit and is unlikely to be regarded as any substitute for the beer and spirits.

However, if it’s any consolation to drinkers and cigarette smokers, even those with less sinful hobbies don’t escape the tax gatherers. Since the

June mini-budget, all imported cat and dog foods attract duty of 40 per cent ad valorem.

PNG will have

own currency

Papua New Guinea will have its own currency “as soon as is practical . . . but not before December,” said Finance Minister Julius Chan early in July.

He told the House of Assembly that there would be a dual currency period with Australian and PNG dol lars—if PNG uses that term —circulating together. There will be no devaluation and PNG’s currency will be at par with Australia’s.

“The decision that Papua New Guinea should have its own currency is a logical one in the context of the stage of development which we have now reached,” Mr Chan said. “There is nothing sinister about it, it is merely one stage in a logical se quence of events.” The Cabinet has decided that there were many com plex technical and policy issues in volved. Two points emerged clearly.

The first was that under the existing arrangement by which Papua New Guinea used Australian currency there were limitations on the Papua New Guinea Government’s ability to implement certain policies.

The second was that so long as Papua New Guinea remained a part of the Australian currency area, there was always the possibility that it would be subject to policy decisions taken in Australia to suit that country’s situation, but which could be contrary to the best interests of Papua New Guinea.

Emphasising that Cabinet had only taken “an in-principle decision,” Mr Chan said he wanted it clearly un derstood that the introduction of a PNG currency was not imminent so that there would be no room for ill informed and mischievous specula tion.—AAP.

Reprieve for

Lord Howe link

The Lord Howe Island flying-boat service from Sydney has been given another reprieve. Instead of ending in November it will continue to May, 1974. On February 14, Mr G.

Steadman, general manager of Air lines of NSW, said to PIM the service would be discontinued in 1973, and added: “This is the first positive statement we have made so far. Previously we have said ‘may be discontinued’, or it was possible it would be discontinued”.

Sir Reginald Ansett, chairman of Ansett Transport Industries, of which Airlines of NSW is a subsidiary, agreed to continue the service after a conference with the NSW Chief Secretary, Mr Griffith. Mr Griffith will recommend that a 3,000 ft airstrip be built at Lord Howe. A feasibility study would start im mediately and would be completed in two or three months. • Solomon Islands Investments Ltd, having sold all the 250,000 Si shares it offered last year, will now buy a half-share in the Mendana Hotel from Guadalcanal Plains Ltd.

The issue was oversubscribed. Naviti Investments Ltd, of Fiji, holds the other half of the investment in the hotel.