Private sector priorities
p. 44 · Read in the full issue
ABOUT the time this issue of PIM is published, I will be chairing in Suva a work seminar of leading island business people, called to discuss ways of improving their business
opportunities in the region.
Private sector representatives from all over the Pacific will be taking part in two days of talks.
The significance of the meeting is that it is a follow-up to a very successful pilot seminar on the same theme held in Suva in April last year. That seminar, like this year’s, was sponsored by the Australian Government.
It followed recommendations for assist ance for private enterprise made by the 1989 report of the Australian Parliamen tary Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs on Australia’s relations with the South Pacific.
The government decided that the most sensible way to find out how Australia could best improve opportunities for islands business people was to ask them directly - hence that pilot seminar. Almost every South Pacific nation or territory, including the French territories, were represented at it by invitation.
The views expressed at the seminar were put to a working group in Canberra, which was asked to make recommen dations for action. 1 was involved in the work of that group, so I know that it stressed in its report that if the government was serious about assisting the private sector, there should be no delay in following up the various recommendations.
There can be no complaint about the quick reaction of the government in Suva last September, when Dr Neal Blcwett, then Australia’s Minister for Trade and Overseas Development, announced a pilot programme of support for private enterprise that flowed from the suggestions made at the seminar and by the working committee.
And the programme has since been put into operation. • Australia is establishing in-country training courses in basic financial and management skills for people setting up small business ventures (the first courses, with an emphasis on entrepreneurial marketing, begin in May in Kiribati, the Federated States of Micronesia, Tonga and Western Samoa); • Allocating places in Australia to train private sector nominees (we at the South Pacific Trade Commission are handling that, and the first programmes, all from four to six weeks, are for nominees from the FSM, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu and Western Samoa); • Has supported a meeting of heads of government of the smaller island states and leading private sector representa tives (it was held in the Cook Islands in January); • With the support of the Australian Executive Service
Tradewinds
Overseas Programme, implemented
an extensive program of one-on-one; training at compound level through out the South Pacific; • lias discussed with likely donors* other assistance programmes for islands business, and has supported! this new consultative seminar.
The theme of this seminar deals*
with the priorities required by the;
private sector. The agenda proposes* discussion on the commercial infra structure of the South Pacific, t includiing the problems of venture; capital, credit, transport and com munications; and trade links such as* commercial networking, imer-islandl trade and trade barriers.
Can there be better co-ordinationr and strengthening of the infrastruc ture and the linkages, and if so, what?
How can the difficulties of getting adequate capital and! credit reference in the region be addressed?
These matters, and the matter of training, were identified! as being key issues at the pilot seminar, but this time there will be opportunity for detailed examination of I hem.
If it can be argued, for instance, that Pacific island! countries are not able to sell themselves as attractive places? for investment because of inadequate resources and! insufficient experience; that many international financial institutions consider the region too small and too frag mented, and therefore too hard for a focus on the region’s needs, what, if anything, can be done about it?
Is there another side (o it? Do island governments sometimes reflect deep suspicion about the nature and! quality of foreign investment, including a concern to protect) import substitution industries and local culture?
Similarly, if most small island countries are unable to raise adequate domestic capital for private sector development, is the problem that the capital market is narrowly based and: poorly developed, the lending practices of the established institutions inflexible, or the management capability of development banks inadequate? Is there something else?
Last year’s pilot seminar discussed, but rejected as being premature, a suggestion that some kind of a business; organisation, or at least a secretariat, be set up to follows through on the various proposals, and the question of “future arrangements” is on this year’s agenda.
Whatever the outcome, the accord and greatei under standing among island business leaders that will flow froim the meeting can only strengthen the aims of the private sector.