Business In Brief
pp. 34-35 · Read in the full issue
The latest trade and finance news from around the region.
□ Union Leaves Fiji
THE UNION Steamship Company
is closing its operations m Fiji after more than 100 years connection with that country. The company is selling its Union Maritime Services Ltd operations in Suva and Lauto ka to the Pacific Forum Line, although Union will continue to represent the Forum Line in
Tonga.
Since the Union company had withdrawn the vessel Marama from the Fiji run in 1979 and Forum having taken up the route, the
company had been dependent
upon agency business alone. Now that the Forum Line had grown, there was no need for Union also to be operating in Fiji. But the ves sel Union Auckland will still carry sugar between Fiji and New Zea land.
□ Pacific Stamps On Wane
THE FORUM Secretariat is orga nising a workshop on ways of reviv
ing the region’s stamp industry.
The small island states are feeling the pinch as world interest in stamp collecting appears to be on the de cline, but of the 15 South Pacific Forum nations, six depend on phi latelic sales for a major proportion of their export earnings; in Kiribati and Tuvalu the stamp business is a major employer. Tuvalu, which has issued vast numbers of new stamps in recent years, has seen a devastat ing drop m sales and the workshop will loot at restraining the number of new issues as well as new market
possibilities.
Most of the island nations in volved have commercial links with British or other stamp companies and the stamps are often designed and printed overseas. Another problem is that stamps from Pacific countries frequently do not reflect the flora, fauna or social history of the countries concerned sucn as Tuvalu’s series of stamps featuring steam locomotives.
□ Hawaiian Airlines Change
HAWAIIAN AIRLINES chairman John Magoon Jr is also to become president of the company after the resignation of Paul Finazzo. Finaz zo, who joined Hawaiian in 1982, will be retained as consultant by the airline for the next two years.
□ Solomons Postpones Forest
Plan
THE Solomon Islands government
has suspended a forestry project
due to go ahead in the country’s Western province. Prime Minister Mamaloni said the SSI 25 million earmarked for the forest scheme will be diverted to other develop ment plans. He pointed to the dan gers of having the money all in vested in one project which could be lost in one of the frequent cyc lones.
□ Tonga Price Index
THE consumer price index in Ton ga rose by 1.6 per cent in the first three months of the year, with
household products (firewood, gas
stoves, posts, insecticides, mirrors) heading the list with a 2.5 per cent increase. Food increased by 1.7 per cent, with larger increases for most fresh vegetables and fish offset by the prices of bele, onions and taro leaves. Clothing and footwear rose 1.8 per cent, mainly for men’s clo
thing and footwear. Transportation
actually dropped, with lower prices
for bicycles, petrol and diesel fuel.
□ Hawaii Farms New Crops
WHILE Hawaii’s sugar and pineap ple industries face increasingly dif ficult times, a report from First Hawaiian Bank points to the grow ing diversification in the state’s farming. Diversified crops’ share of total crop value rose from 24 per cent in 1983 to 32 per cent in 1987.
One of the more successful new crops is macadamia nuts, with pro duction climbing 50 per cent in value since 1983. Kona coffee saw a 15 per cent increase in areaplanted between 1983 and 1987, and pro ducers are aiming at the gourmet coffee market. Hawaii’s flower and nursery product industry is also
doing well.
Several new crops are showing
commercial potential: guava (crop
value in 1987 was |US2 million) and cocoa (with a first harvest due this year), are the two most promis ing, especially the latter if the Her shey Food Company goes ahead witn plans to develop chocolate
products using Hawaiian-grown
cocoa beans.
□ Fiji Economic Summit
FIJI WILL this month hold its first
national economic summit meeting in three years. Finance Minister Josevata Kamikamica said the meet ing will help develop a consultative framework to further Fiji’s econo mic recovery, and leaders from a cross-section of the community will be able to express views and contri bute their ideas. “Fiji’s economic re covery is still in its early stages and it is vital that the nation under stands this,” the Minister said.
□ Nz Seeks New Fly Killer
NEW ZEALAND’S Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF) is testing a new method to kill fruitflv in food imports from the Soutn Pacific. The new process is dry heat disinfestation, which uses warm air circulated at relatively low humidity to destroy the pest. The fruit is
held at a temperature just long
enough to kill the fly.
The research has been made necessary by New Zealand health
regulations recently introduced re
quiring a reduction in the use of ethylene dibromide (EDB) tradi tionally used on fruit from Fiji, Niue, Tonga, Western Samoa and the Cook Islands. The lucrative fruit and vegetable export trade to New Zealana is threatened unless a new method is found to kill the
fruitfly.
□ Png Needs To Process Goods
Papua New Guinea’S Trade
and Industry Minister Galewa Kwarara says his country urgently needs to increase the processing of its raw products. “Unless we set up companies which are willing to further process our goods, we will slowly lose whatever little market we have to our competitors in In donesia, Malaysia and the Philip pines,” the Minister told a business lunch in Cairns, Australia.
About 40 per cent of the coun try’s gross national product derives
from unprocessed products, includ
ing copper concentrate, gold, cof fee, palm oil, cocoa, tea, copra, fish and timber.
Mr Kwarara said the government not only wanted the raw products to be exported as semi-processed but, if possible, to leave the country as consumable finished goods. He said that Australian companies in vesting in manufacturing would get preferential access to the Austra lian, New Zealand and European
Community markets.
□ Solomons To Privatise
THE SOLOMON Islands govern ment will seek to privatise some of its major corporate investments in
joint-venture enterprises or wholly
owned government companies. Fi nance Minister Christopher Col umbus Abe said the first property to be sold off is the government owned 101-bed Hotel Mendana, the nation’s biggest; the sale of the National Fisheries Development company will follow. The Minister said it was Alliance Party policy to encourage maximum private sector investment.
□ Oils Under Attack
THE SOUTH Pacific Forum Secre tariat is concerned about the dam age to the region’s exporters of coconut and palm oils caused by a US health awareness campaign.
Washington had prepared legisla
tion aimed at introducing compul sory labelling on coconut oil and
palm oil products. The two tropical
oils came under the spotlight m a national campaign titled “the poisoning of America”.
The Forum Secretariat’s trade and investment division believes the two tropical products have been unjustly singled out in an emotive
and unbalanced campaign that
ignores other substances, particu
larly soya oil, produced in the US and not mentioned in the cam paign. The division will consider ways in which the campaign can be countered.
□ New Png Shipping Service
THE JOHN Burke Group is to start a new service from Sydney to Lae, Madang and Port Moresby.
The company will use the vessel Sid McGrath ana will ship refrigerated containers, break bult and roll-on, roll-off cargo.
□ Miners Watch Solomons
Policies
IN ITS latest quarterly report, the
Australian mining company Mag
num Resources Ltd reported to the Australian Stock exchange that no work had been carried out on its Solomons tenements during the March quarter. The company said that, as a result of recent elections in the Solomon Islands and the new government being in power, Magnum and other explorers were anxiously awaiting the new admi
nistration’s specific policies regard
ing exploration and mining.
Magnum said the new govern ment was reported to be keen to encourage productive investment in
the country, but “the extent to which this will assist exploration and overcome currently onerous (and often unresolvable) access problems remains to be seen”.
□ Bougainville Share Offer
THE PAPUA New Guinea govern ment is to offer about half its shares in Bougainville Copper Ltd to local landholders in the North Solomons Province in an attempt to quell the violence surrounding the mining project. The National Gov ernment has a 19.1 per cent in terest in BCL, and Prime Minister Rabbie Namaliu announced that 4.9 per cent of the company will be available to the landholders at cost with a further 5.1 per cent to be sold to them at current market value.
□ Sugar Agreement Renewed
THE SOUTH Pacific regional sugar agreement has been renewed for a further three years after a meeting of Forum countries Fiji, Kiribati, Tonga, Tuvalu and West ern Samoa in Suva, a gathering that saw the admission to tne agree ment of the Republic of the Mar shall Islands. Tne new agreement runs until 1992 and includes quota allocations and prices for sugar supplied for the 1989-90 season.