FIJI is seeking to expand trade and investment across the Pacific, with Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica highlighting carbon, digital transformation and stronger regional business links as key opportunities for economic growth.
Speaking after a Fiji-Australia Business Council meeting hosted in Fiji, Kamikamica said Australia remained Fiji’s largest economic partner, while the councils had played a crucial role in supporting trade and investment between the two countries.
“It is quite a crucial group,” he said, describing the councils as the primary private-sector representatives for Australia-Fiji trade and economic flows.
Kamikamica said Fiji’s economic opportunities extended beyond Australia, identifying commercial agriculture, aquaculture, tourism, information and communications technology and renewable energy as areas for continued regional collaboration.
He said Fiji needed to make it easier for investors to do business by reducing administrative barriers and advancing digital transformation.
“If, for example, investor permit takes seven days, company registration takes, in New Zealand it now takes 24 hours,” he said.
“If that can happen in Fiji, in this genuine digital transformation, that will put Fiji on a different platform and make it more attractive to invest.”
Kamikamica said the integration of systems between Australia and Fiji could lead to significant changes in how permits were approved.
“Just imagine if the business environment is equally as easy, it will be transformative there,” he said.
He also described carbon as a potential major industry for Fiji, saying exports to Australia were still being conducted on a trial basis and had not reached their maximum potential.
“So there’s still potential for growth in Kava in Australia,” he said, adding that Fiji was lobbying for the trial basis to be removed.
“There’s a major opportunity for Kava in Fiji,” Kamikamica said.
A new Kava bill was due to be tabled in Parliament to regulate the industry and protect farmers and the quality of living in Fiji.
“The last thing you want is, you know, an industry that’s unregulated,” he said. “The fines are not there to discourage farmers, it’s there to encourage them to do the right thing.”
Kamikamica said Fiji also saw significant potential in Papua New Guinea, where some Fijian manufacturers were beginning to re-enter.
“There’s heaps of potential in Papua New Guinea,” he said, describing the country as the largest economy in the Pacific and predicting it would become “the Dubai of the Pacific” because of its resources and minerals.
He also identified Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Zealand, Micronesia and Nauru as areas for expanded trade relations and investment.
“The Micronesia opportunity or the Naoero opportunity is an excellent one,” he said.
“There is an active agenda of continued collaboration with all our partners.”
