New Caledonia
pp. 40-41 · Read in the full issue
WHILE France has lost a great deal of its share of imports into New Caledonia, it has been more suc cessful in controlling investments by its Pacific competitors. Major projects in volving investment from non-EEC coun tries have to be processed both in Noumea and Paris unless these projects have some French participation, in which case approval is much more readily obtained.
The usual requirement is for 50 per cent French ownership.
France once supplied more than half of the territory’s needs; this has diminished to about a third. The major benefactor of the change is Australia, which sells about $ A5O million worth of goods each year to New Caledonia, mostly in the form of food.
The major industry is nickel, on which the territory’s considerable wealth has been
built. The main island has some natural resources other than mining, but these have not been fully realised: more than a fifth of the total land area is covered in for est, but milling is now on a small scale and any development would be impeded by New Caledonia’s growing number of Kanak separatists.
Fishing is still on a small scale, and past efforts to develop capacity for anything more than local needs have failed; even one recent attempt that enjoyed considerable financial assistance from the French Government was unable to make a profit.
Tourism is the sole area in which the authorities in Noumea are receptive to foreign proposals. With continuing falls in the number of tourists in 1985, for ex ample, Australian tourist numbers dropped to about a fifth of those of the
previous year Australian and other investors became wary. One Melbourne company pulled out of the Tiare Hotel project, a multi-million dollar develop ment between Noumea and Tontouta air port: the project is still awaiting a major investor. About SAIO million has already been spent by the local French partner, and a SA2O million French Government loan is available, but still no outside partner has been signed up.
New Caledonia is seen as politcally unstable and events in Fiji and Vanuatu have combined to make hotel develop ment a much more certain prospect on the Queensland coast.
The strength of the franc against both the Australian and New Zealand dollars has made New Caledonia an expensive place to holiday for people from these Pa cific neighbours, with the result that de velopers and business people in Noumea are tending to look to the US and Japan for both tourist investment and tourists themselves, though the most convenient air links are with Australia and New Zealand.