lending services

Business Bulletin

Fiji’s tourism

earnings soar

FIJI earned an estimated US$52 million from tourism in the three months to the end of June this year. This represented an increase of $5.3 million or 11.3 per cent over the same period last year.

Tourist arrivals rose by 7.4 per cent to 66,358 during the quarter compared with last year which was 62,263, Tourism has continued to be Fiji’s major foreign exchange earner since 1989. However, long dominant sugar exports are still important as more of its foreign earnings remain in Fiji.

Church buys

bank shares

THE sale of National Australia Bank’s 87 Eer cent stake in Papua New Guinea’s ank of South Pacific Ltd to a local Catholic Church-led consortium was finalised late August. Announcing the completion of the $11.3 million acqui sition by National Investment Holdings Ltd (NIH), chairman Alfred Daniel said the transition would be smooth with no disruption to the bank’s operations.

He said National Australia Bank’s (NAB) Noel Smith would remain man aging director of the bank until the end of next year. “NIH will now begin formulating the future policies of the bank with emphasis on how the nation’s

first nationally-owned private sector

bank can improve and broaden its services to business and individuals in PNG,” Daniel said in a statement.

NAB chairman William Irvine has said the sale of Bank of South Pacific was agreed as it was peripheral to NAB’s mainstream activities in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Continental pullout

to help islands?

FHERE’S hope among South Pacific sland nations that they will benefit from Be decision by American airline Clontinetal to cancel all services to Australia and New Zealand. Continental s also terminating all airfare and iccommodation packages out of Austra ia to Hawaii when the services cease on October 30.

Marketing director of the Fiji Visitors Jureau Bill Whiting said Fiji would lefinitely benefit from the end of the Continental services. He said cheap >ackage tours to Hawaii from Australia lad presented a tough challenge to ourist destinations in the South Pacific.

Vhiting said other airlines could move ito the Australia/Hawaii market but did ot believe they would copy the loss laking fares of recent times.

He said Fiji, with 50 per cent of tourist ccommodation available in the South ’acific, was well placed to win a foportion of the business that might ave gone to Hawaii. Other regional

nations which could benefit from the Continental move include Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia and New Caledonia.

Solomons urges

ties with Taiwan

SOLOMON Islands is encouraging other Pacific island countries to look to Taiwan for economic assistance and trade. Solomon Islands deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister Francis Saemala says Taiwan has be come a major economic power and has a lot to offer developing nations in the region.

Saemala says the political differences between the two Chinas are an internal matter for them and there’s no need for Pacific countries to get involved.

Saemala said Taiwan had expressed willingness to assist in the establishment of the University of the South Pacific’s School of Marine Study in Solomon Islands. Solomon Islands has full diplo matic relations with Taiwan along with Nauru, Tonga and Tuvalu.

Chinese looking at

Marshalls investment

MARSHALL Islands ambassador to China Laurence Edwards said in the past year a flood of Chinese officials and businessmen had looked at investment in his country. China’s primary interest in the Marshall Islands is the free access it enjoys to the American market.

Edwards says two groups from China are interested in bringing in up to 100 fishing boats. And he says a group from Hainan has plans to establish an indus trial park with factories for canned coconut, pandanus juice and fish meal as well as business, recreation and other facilities. Another group wants to set up a joint venture brewery.

Edwards says once these are up and running, the Marshall Islands will be able to stand on its own feet with a non artificial economy.

EIE creditors

take control

CREDITORS of the Japanese company EIE International Corporation have taken control of the company’s assets in Fiji. The EIE properties include The

Regent of Fiji Resort, Sheraton Fiji

Resort and the adjoining championship golf course which opened in June.

A report in the Australian Financial Review said the troubled Electronic Industrial Enterprises (EIE) had com mitted itself to about $2OO million investment in Fiji. The newspaper said the bulk of this sum had already been spent in developing a major resort and

hotel complex.

The Financial Review quoted Keigo Fujii, a spokesman for ElE’s main creditor, the Long Term Credit Bank of

Japan Limited, as saying the bank had exercised its right to take up voting rights in the shares in the Fiji company and now had control of the project.

The move, however, will not have any immediate effect on work on the multi million dollar project and operations of the two popular resorts which employ hundreds of workers.

Winds, rain hit

Tonga’s pumpkin crop

IN Tonga, strong winds and heavy rain in mid-August damaged the kingdom’s

lucrative squash pumpkin plantations.

Radio Tonga said medium-sized plants five to six weeks old had been particu larly badly hit.

The radio said the current crop had also been hit by a fungus which attacks squash plants. It says revenue from squash exports is likely to be down this year. Tonga has rapidly built a squash pumpkin market in Japan and now earns millions of dollars a year from exports.

Solomon Airlines

in the red

AN exchange of words between the Solomon Islands minister of finance Andrew Nori and former finance minis ter Christopher Columbus Abe has revealed the national flag carrier Sol omon Airlines is in senous financial difficulties. A statement from Nori said the airline was more than three months in arrears on lease payments of its Boeing 737-400 and is facing repossesion of the jet by the leasing company, International Lease Finance Corporation of California.

His statement came in response to an earlier claim by Abe that cabinet had endorsed the new finance minister’s intention to borrow US$l.3 million to help the airline out of its troubles. But the present minister has rejected the possi bility of looking for domestic loan financing saying loans should be nego tiated by the airlines legal owner, Investment Corporation of Solomon Islands or the airline itself.

Nori said the last government made a serious mistake when it decided to lease overseas jets.

Bank to upgrade

lending services

THE Tonga Development Bank has launched a major project to upgrade lending and banking services to the people of the kingdom’s outer islands.

The project will be implemented over the next five years at a total cost of US$6.6 million. It is being funded jointly by the development bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. The major part of the project is a credit line of U 54.4 million to finance the bank’s lending to small farmers and fishermen, women’s and other groups as well as small businesses in the outer islands. □