Fiji Plans To Use
pp. 15-73 · Read in the full issue
Its Empty Acres
From ROBERT KEITH-REID in Suva
Take a small plane and fly low over Fiji and you’ll be puzzled by often-heard comments that the coun try’s 560,000 people are short of land.
The plane ride would reveal that hundreds of the 7055 square miles that make up the 350 islands of the Fiji group are uninhabited and ap parently untouched.
There is little sign of humanity in much of the wild and mountainous interiors of the 4011 square miles of Viti Levu, the biggest island in the group.
Vast tracts of the 2137 square miles of Vanua Levu, the second big gest island, are similarly deserted, apart from an isolated Fijian village here and there at the bottom of a deep river valley.
Even the next two biggest islands, Taveuni, 168 square miles, and Ka davu, 156 square miles, appear to offer a lot of unused living space.
The plane ride would partly ex plain why so much land lies de serted. Jagged volcanic peaks and razor-backed ridges climbing out of a thick, green shroud of tropical rain forest arc evidence of terrain that so far has been too tough for Fiji’s people to bother tackling.
They have not had to touch such land since flat plains cleared for them by the workings of the Rewa, Navua, Ba and other major rivers have been much more easily worked.
But now, population pressure in the plains has caused a land shortage of a sort. There is little easily tilled land left. Aspiring farmers must now turn their eyes inland for land from which they can get a living.
The opening up of interior areas is one of the chief strategies of De velopment Plan Seven—DP 7 for short—which the Fiji Government published at the end of December.
As the title suggests, it is the seventh in a series of economic plans drafted and undertaken by successive governments.
It touches every aspect of life in Fiji.
DP7 will cover the years 1976- 1980 and succeds DP6, which covered 1971-1975.
“If DP7 can be said to have a distinctive character”, says Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara in a foreword, “I should say it is an increased concern with the need to
ensure a more equal sharing of the fruits of development, and a deeper recognition of the sources of Fiji’s real wealth and productive capacity —in the soil, in the sea and in the hands of rural producers”.
Putting the PM’s words more bluntly, the plan takes notices of old laments from the bush that the flesh pots of Suva, Lautoka, Nadi and other urban areas have long got too much attention at the expense of country folk. And that, because this has been so, there has been a danger ous flow, in volume increasing almost daily, of country folk to the towns, there to swell the problems of unemployment, slum-housing con ditions and crime that already exist in them.
DP7 is an attempt to even out the balance. During the next five years the Fiji Government plans capital expenditure of $337,000,000 —about three times the amount spent on DP6—in trying to set the balance right.
Of this, about $60,000,000 will go on a big hydro-electric power scheme which will cover much of those un touched expanses of Viti Levu’a interior with a network of lakes, dams and roads.
And $30,000,000 will go on roads which push into some of the most isolated areas of Fiji. The Public Works Departments will gear up to build 711 miles of roads, compared with only 200 miles built during DP6.
Some of the new roads will be major ones, including a circum insular road for Vanua Levu to open up large areas of Natewa Bay and Bua, a couple or more roads across the same island, and numerous im portant extensions of existing roads into the Viti Levu interior.
Local air and sea services will get almost as much attention on the assumption that the mere availability of regular, reliable transportation will do more to stimulate local de velopment schemes than anything else.
Airstrips suitable for the Islander and Trislander planes flown by Air Pacific and Fiji Air will be built in the outer island region at the rate of three a year.
The first strips will be for Gau, Kadavu, Vanua Balavu, Koro,
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Moala and Bua province, in Vanua Levu.
Work on building jetties in the islands will be accelerated also.
The present inter-island shipping service set-up is in a parlous state and the solution appears to be the introduction, in place of numerous small worn-out motor-sailers, of larger, more efficient ships.
But these need jetties at which they can load close in to shore, in sheltered waters.
The jetties will appear at more than a dozen centres.
DP7’s broad objectives are the attainment of a seven per cent an nual growth in the gross national product, to keep population growth at two per cent and to create jobs in a fashion that is not going to ruin the quality of the Fijian way of life.
Planners see agriculture as gener ating most of the new jobs, but they admit difficulties in this area.
“The problem is not only to en sure a high rate of employment growth in cash agriculture, but to provide conditions adequate for better-educated youths to be at tracted to such work”, they comment.
Agriculture, regarded as the back bone of the Fiji economy, was the big failure of DP6. Instead of achieving the growth rate set for it,
agricultural production actually fell.
There were a lot of reasons for this—a succession of hurricanes and droughts, hugh increases in farm costs, see-saw commodity prices and a drift by farmers from the land to jobs in towns or in hotels that offered a better return.
Up and coming crops such as cocoa, passionfruit and ginger are due to be small but healthy export earners by 1980. They already are, and the aim is to build them up steadily.
DP6 was supposed to have made Fiji self-sufficient for rice. But it is still necessary to import over 20,000 tons a year, and the state of self sufficiency has been deferred—due to a host of difficult problems with irrigation schemes—to 1979 or thereabouts.
Emphasis on rice growing will switch from Viti Levu to Vanua Levu.
In 1974, meat exports cost Fiji $4,690,000. DP7 sets out to whittle this down with a target of eventual self-sufficiency for beef. Nearly all the pork and eggs eaten locally are home-produced, but there is a long way to go yet when it comes to
poultry meat, goat meat and dairy products.
The Fiji Government has always been annoyed about the amount of tinned fish imported by a country which has seas teeming with fresh stuff. DP6 set down a lot of what the experts like to call “infrastruc ture”, in this case organisation, and boats and nets and fish-freezers.
The chief move in the field of fisheries will be the opening this year at Levuka of a Japanese-Fiji Govern ment-owned cannery. It will be sup plied by chartered Asian ships and a fleet of up to nine local tuna catchers.
Forestry began to change the face of the dry hills area of Fiji early in the 1970 s as plantations of young, quick-growing Caribbean Pine began to spread over them.
The pine project is the big hope for the future; by the mid-1980s annual export of pine chip, pulp and logs could be earning more than sugar, according to some forecasts.
Close to $13,000,000 will be spent on this scheme through DP7. With some 30,000 acres planted already, it’s intended to take this figure to at least 186,000 acres with 67,000 acres covered by 1980. Felling for pulp is due to start in 1986.
Through the 1960 s and 19705, tourism, growing at express speed, was regarded by the government as an industry to be milked for revenue to finance longer-term projects in other sectors. It boomed with growth rates of over 30 per cent. But in the last two years growth has halted, due to world-wide economic prob lems.
Last year the tourist total was less than the 1974 figures.
The government view of tourism has become far more cautious and cooler.
The plan sets an annual growth rate of 10 per cent for tourism and stresses that this level “in no way in dicates government’s curtailment of the industry”.
Dealing with commerce, manufac turing and trade, DP7 sets a 20 per cent a year growth rate for the ex port of locally-manufactured pro ducts and promises vigorous efforts to stimulate new industries making goods to reduce imports.
Abolition of commonwealth tariff preference in 1974 has not, so far, radically altered Fiji’s trade pat terns, but there are signs that changes are under wav.
While Australia, New Zealand and Britain supplied more than half the
imports in 1974, a group of 10 Asian export countries increased their combined hold on the Fiji market from 10.4 per cent in 1965 to 16.6 per cent in 1974—displacing Britain and New Zealand in the process.
This trend will continue, the plan forecasts.
The planners warn that, despite the huge investment to be made in hydro-electric power, the country could still be facing serious power problems in the early 1980 s.
The hydro-power schemes will produce a total of 121 megawatts of power compared with the 83 mega watts produced by existing oil-fuelled power stations. Yet, say the planners, it is possible that the entire hydro power output could be taken by a copper mine likely to open at Na mosi, 25 miles inland from Suva, while a pulp mill due to open in south-eastern Viti Levu in conjunc tion with the pine schemes would also have big power needs.
Hoping to further lessen depen dence on imported fuels, the govern ment will embark on a $2,000,000 investigation of 86 known geothermal sites, hoping that some can be tap ped for power, and also carry out research aimed at harnessing solar, wind and gas forms of energy.
Education plans call for the con tinued revision of school curricula and, at least, 10 years school for every child wanting it. School fees will be progressively scrapped.
Consideration is being given to increasing the time schools are occu pied from 1,200 to 1,800 hours a year. Some big secondary schools will operate from 8.30 am to 1 pm for one lot of pupils and from 1 pm to 5.30 pm for a second lot.
Where’s all the money coming from? The plan will draw 22 per cent from the government’s general revenues and it is hoped to get 50 per cent from lending agencies such as the World Bank and in overseas aid. The balance, it says, will be borrowed from local sources. Chief source of local loans will be the Fiji National Provident Fund, to which every regular worker in Fiji must compulsorily contribute six per cent of his earnings and his em ployer a matching amount.
The FNPF, the planners reckon, should supply $70,000,000.
A stock exchange will be opened and legislation will be enacted to ensure that foreign insurance firms operating in Fiji channel very much more of their income into local de velopment instead of sending it abroad.