Pacific Islands’ Business

Mana (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 9, 27 October 1977, Page 2

Pacific Islands’ Business

Ministers, -officials and businessmen in the South Pacific are waiting anxiously to see how the New Zealand Government Pacific Islands Industrial Development Scheme will work for them. Anthony Haas, managing director of Asia Pacific Research Unit, recently returned from a fact finding tour of the South Pacific, reports that prominent leaders there are keen to see employment promoting industries established, increased access to the New Zealand market for their exports and to see further processing of their highly price sensitive agro industries at home before export. The question they are asking is whether the New Zealand business community is responding to the incentives offered by the scheme. A book "New Zealand and the South Pacific” has just been published by Asia Pacific Research Unit; it was commissioned by the New Zealand Government and has been written in close consultation with both the New Zealand Government

and the Islands governments. This publication gives information on the scheme and on the Island economies in which New Zealanders are invited to invest. The Department of Trade and Industry has held a seminar in Auckland on October 26 to inform New Zealand businessmen about the scheme. The book "New Zealand and the South Pacific” was launched at that seminar. Guest speakers at the seminar included representa-

tives from the Island government concerned and from companies already operating in the Island. Asia Pacific Research Unit started looking at political and economic trends in the Islands in 1970 and has done consultant work with the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Co-operation, the New Zealand Department of Education and companies interested in agro industries in the Islands. The recent trip to the South Pacific by Anthony Haas was partly

sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme to look at development possibilities for the Islands.