unemployment

One option to resolve unemployment

It is widely known that Fiji has the most accessible, mature, sustainably managed, quality (insect free), plantation mahogany, in substantial and consistent qualities, in the world today.

Fiji’s mahogany timber will soon be harvested in commercial quantities. The processing of this valuable resource into finished products, such as furniture and furniture products, will provide at least 10,000 jobs for the male youth of Fiji.

The question arises: “Should Fiji, with its great mahogany resource, ensure that a well developed value-added timber industry is created immediately, providing much-needed job opportunities and foreign exchange or should Fiji sell its valuable mahogany plantations to a foreign company, with management rights to export raw and/or semi processed timber.”

Mahogany could be responsible for

Continued next page

Continued from previous page

bringing in some four billion dollars of net foreign exchange over the next 35 years and creating thousands of jobs, particularly for the young male workforce who are not necessarily attracted to the garment industry.

With proper government policy in place, major foreign furniture companies (and there are a number interested) would have no alternative but to establish their manufacturing operations in Fiji NOW (not after five years of the raw timber being exported) either independently or in joint venture with local operators, creating these much needed job opportunities. It is timely that a transparent policy be in place to ensure that only the full potential of this unique

and valuable mahogany is realised.

Within the next five years, like Indonesia and Malaysia, Fiji could then have a thriving, internationally acclaimed furniture industry, with at least 10 major international furniture manufacturing companies, processing mahogany into fine furniture products, and employing thousands of young men on good wages.

Elizabeth Clayton,

CHE International Furniture Ltd, Suva, Fiji