Kiribati has secured a US$1.71 million deal for 15,000 tonnes of tuna per year with the European Union. Under the agreement, the EU is now able to deploy four purse seiner and six longline vessels in Kiribati’s waters.
An offshore investment made by pension funds in the Pacific does not only have to mean diversifying to the more developed Western or Asian economies.
Early in the term of Papua New Guinea’s new government—which has ensured, by a constitutional amendment, that it will be in power at least until this time in 2015 – it is facing some complex challenges, especially around the country’s biggest revenue earner, mining. There’s a common view, even in ...
Airlines have a strange way of doing business. For years they can be in a cut-throat competition but then overnight they can jump in bed with each other. But then again they are no different to other industries—the same can be said about banks, telecommunications, energy and manufacturing companies.
Fiji companies trading with China stand to benefit immensely from the ANZ Bank’s Renminbi Trading Platform. Launched recently in Suva, the platform now means Fiji traders won’t have to convert their cash into US dollars and then convert it again into Chinese currency—termed as double conversion.
Solomon Islands was on a downward spiral when an Australian-led intervention force landed in Honiara in 2003. The country was then dubbed “a failed state.” For good reasons.
It’s been eight months since the old Fugalei produce market had closed down. And there were plans a new premises would open in mid-year 2013. But it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen as the bidding process continues to drag on.
PNG government’s determination to push ahead with the development of the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone (PMIZ) is likely to cause a clash amongst landowners if outstanding issues are not adequately addressed.
Although last year produced agreement about how much money will be paid for US vessels to fish in the Pacific, there are still many hurdles to leap before a new US Pacific tuna treaty arrangement can be approved, say fisheries officials in the Marshall Islands.
Nauru, an island nation spanning 21 square kilometres located on the equator and in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is a desolate place to a foreigner.
The Marshall Islands could see a revamp of a tax system that it has employed for more than a quarter of a century if the Nitijela (parliament) backs legislation recently introduced to the body.
If and when the United States secretary of Labor decides not to extend the federal immigration transition period beyond Dec. 31, 2014 in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), then the foreign worker population is supposed to be zeroed out by Jan 1, 2015.
Papua New Guinea experienced yet another year of high growth in 2012: GDP growth over the past 10 years has averaged close to 6 percent.
As the European Union (EU) takes Fiji and Vanuatu to task for having weak laws to tackle illegal fishing, international environmental campaigner Greenpeace has urged the EU to also set a good example and support local fish conservation efforts while fishing in the Pacific.
The US$1.5 billion Ramu Nickel Mine in Madang, PNG, was commissioned last month amidst rising concerns about pollution in the province’s sea.
Fiji and New Zealand handed Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) a severe blow in their 2012 profit results with both countries noticeably losing sales and demand for alcohol and beverages due to economic slowdown.
Pacific kava exporters are crying foul over yet another setback to the kava export industry—a delay in united efforts to have kava declared a safe food item internationally.
Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister Peter O’Neill is upbeat about creating thousands of new jobs for Papua New Guineans in the coming years.He, according to the PNG’s private sector, seems think he has the right recipe to create more jobs for young Papua New Guineans leaving the school system.
Coca Cola Amatil (CCA) has scratched out Foster’s Group Pacific Ltd (FGPL) from its new beer and spirit business in Fiji and Samoa, renaming it Paradise Beverages (Fiji) Limited as it charts a new direction under new leadership into the alcoholic beverages market in the Pacific region and Australia.
A regional and a global organisation have collaborated to launch a set of six new exporting guides for Pacific islands exporters of agriculture products. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and Pacific Islands Trade & Invest (PT&I), the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat’s trade and investment arm, ...
Studies about how significant a role the private sector plays in the economies of the Pacific islands and how it affects the lives and living standards of the islanders are hard to come by and no doubt present significant challenges at every level to policy-makers.
Costs up. Foreign dollars up. Forecast profits up. Landowner issues up. Work stoppages up. What’s next for the region’s biggest ever single commercial project as it nears its last quarter of completion in Papua New Guinea?
ANZ and Westpac have surprised critics with mega multi-billion profits through astute and innovative strategies in the volatile fiscal 2011-2012 year.
Australia’s Seasonal Worker Programme is up and running with opportunities expanding in new sectors like fisheries, agriculture and tourism.
The Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) has hit several hurdles in an aggressive push to take control of a fishing industry long dominated by distant water fishing interests.
New foreign investments in fisheries could gradually leapfrog Oceania’s oldest export industry to reclaim the number one export earner status again ahead of tourism.
PNG’s biggest port project now underway in Lae will see its wharf extended to cater for the increasing shipping traffic in the nation’s industrial city.
‘It is heartening to see that an event promoting women in business is bringing together women entrepreneurs, academics, financial and business experts, bankers and women media persons together in Fiji this month to identify the ongoing challenges women face in their business endeavours and deliberate on finding solutions’
Its progress as a national development project may seem slow to Western eyes but for the past two years, officials behind the Auluta Basin Oil Palm Project have navigated through the contentious issue of landownership on the island of Malaita.
Papua New Guinea's new government has raised fresh concerns over shareholding issues relating to its joint venture arrangements with Canadian-listed pioneer seabed minerals miner Nautilus Minerals Inc.
A key fisheries body in the Pacific has criticized the European Union for a recently signed fisheries agreement that does not require EU fishing vessels to abide by already established fisheries management requirements in the region.
Leading Australian travel operator, Flight Centre, has listed Fiji as one of its target business expansions over the next five years as it foresees phenomenal growth in both leisure and corporate travels.
No problem is more critical to the islands region as is brain drain. Attempts over the years to contain the situation has fallen on deaf years as increasing number of professionals and skilled labour flock to shores of Australia and New Zealand for greener pastures.
Island Brewing Company has added three new export markets—Japan, Hawaii and California—taking the number of export markets to a total of six. These partnerships are pivotal for the company and will increase export production ten-fold over the next five years.
There are fresh fears a gambling “epidemic” impacting New Zealand’s Pacific community will only worsen if the construction of a controversial NZ$350 million international convention centre is given the green-light in Auckland.
Not all mineral prices suffered as much hiding as nickel did in the wake of the global financial recession of the last four years.
Merge the worthiness of the world's two mega-huge economies—the United States and Japan—and you won't still collect A$20 trillion.
For the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), a flag carrier continues to be a pipe dream after Saipan Air Inc. initially indefinitely postponed and later on ceased its operations two days before the much-awaited July 1 inaugural flight.
One government calls it a tax haven for investors, another dubs it as a mechanism for dubious money laundering.
Industry body says telcos need to engage with OTT players to identify opportunities to add value, generate revenue from content.
Fiji’s Central Division, where the capital Suva is located, will be allocated more housing lots in the coming years to accommodate the growing number of people moving from the rural to the urban areas.
Exports of premium Pacific islands beer will soon hit the bars in Australia and New Zealand as Coca Cola Amatil (CCA) diversifies into beer.
In October 2010, Peace Corps volunteer Michelle Ferreira showed three women in Wailevu village on Vanua Levu how to make virgin coconut oil.
Discussions between Nautilus Minerals and the state of PNG have failed to resolve a dispute that has halted the progress of experimental Solwara 1 seabed mining in PNG waters.
Palau Supreme Court Chief Justice Arthur Ngiraklsong on May 3, ordered the return of over US$130,000 collected by the government from foreign workers.
A delegate at this year’s Australia-PNG Business Council meeting complained bitterly about the difficulty in securing visas for his workers to travel for a retreat to Australia.
Poor infrastructure and high vulnerability to external shocks has meant low services exports amongst African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, says the ACP Group’s chief executive.
A free-trade agreement between Australia and New Zealand and the independent Pacific islands gained momentum at meetings in the Marshall Islands in mid-May, said Australian Parliamentary Secretary for the Pacific Richard Marles at the wrap up of the Forum Trade Ministers’ Meeting.
When you launch a mega-size project of US$15.7 billion, you can expect snag after snag before it takes off. The project with a potential to rake in billions of kina in two years into the developing economy of Papua New Guinea has been no exception.
The Australia-PNG Business Council (APNGBC) held its 28th Business Forum on the theme “Today’s Opportunity: Tomorrow’s Prosperity” in Brisbane from May 13-15.
Businessman David Iro, who pioneered solar development in his native Solomon Islands, was looking forward to cap off his success by manufacturing solar for the first time this yea—12 years after he started from almost nothing.
Dirty, ugly tuna politics reared its ugly head again at the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) meeting in Guam in March.
You know it’s good days around when the banks are making more and more money. Our major Pacific banks—Westpac and ANZ—are a true testimony to this.
How can the Pacific region’s agriculture and forestry industries access the booming Chinese economy and its growing need for food and timber?
Economic conditions in Europe and North America remain volatile. It is uncertain economic times and there is little hope of conditions improving soon. The only certainty is that the volatile conditions are likely to remain for the rest of 2012 at least.
It’s easy to spot Pacifica products such as handbags made from bamboo, pandanus leaves, seashells and so on at events like Pasifika, the world’s largest Polynesian festival that takes place annually in Auckland.
Forget China. The next best thing, if you want a new market brimming with more opportunities than you can swallow, is much closer to home than you think.
AN analysis on trends in connectivity, access and latest price review will be available to members of the Pacific Islands Telecommunications Association (PITA) this month.
As Pacific members of the ACP group scramble to finalise their economic partnership agreement with the Europeans, scepticism is mounting over the ability of the islands to negotiate in solidarity as one single bloc.
The number of days and how much the United States is willing to pay will be the deal breaker in the current negotiations for a successor agreement to the US tuna treaty.
Minor shareholders in the Fiji listed Foster’s Pacific Group Ltd will be counting down the days to a beer blues if the offer by Coca-Cola Amatil for their shares falls short of the per share price of F$13.50.
Fiji’s ATH is about to swamp Fiji’s telecommunications market with its presence, if Fiji’s financial and industry regulators approve an agreement it announced last month to buy a substantial stake in FINTEL.
A report on the development of the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone (PMIZ) in Madang has recommended that further studies be carried out on the experiences of Special Economic Zones (SEZ).
This has always been debated in the past decade -- while farmers cry out for more markets for their products, government insists they be mindful of what they ask for.
It’s often said that one man’s loss is another’s gain. And nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to Samoa’s latest report by the Central Bank on export earnings for the last quarter of 2011.
Resource area landowner companies generally have a bad name in Papua New Guinea.
Increasing online banking and spill-over effects from the ongoing mild recession in Europe will induce major Australian-owned banks in the Pacific to tighten lending, slash jobs and cut back on slow-performing branches this year.
Pacific Islands countries remain relatively sheltered from the predicted worsening global economy even though they would experience the usual bumps in tourism, remittances and aid, a regular commentator on economies in the Pacific says.
Over the last eight years as larger Australian banks like the Commonwealth and Westpac have downsized or even exited the islands markets, BSP (Bank South Pacific) has been stepping in to fill the vacuum where needed like in Fiji, Niue and the Solomon Islands.
