Page 13 - IB Mar 2020

Agriculture Agriculture

Fiji’s Agriculture Ministry officials conduct interviews with farmers as part of the agricultural census currently underway. Photo: Sosiceni Rokotuiviwa, Akuila Kuritoko,
CBML Team Fiji Agricultural Census 2020

make this amount of money I’m not going to be involved and target… so it’s quite a challenge bringing them together.”
get this amount.' Siakimotu says despite these challenges, joint working
In 2018-19 Tonga raised A$36.5 million through the Seasonal group have enabled collaboration on issues such as the
Worker Program, more than Australian aid and exports to verification of legal origin, biosafety, and on specific
Australia combined. A World Bank report in 2018 found income commodities.
raised through the SWP was spent on education, on household “When the private sector brings to the table their
improvements and consumption, but less frequently invested investment and the government sees that as ok, ‘we are
back into agricultural ventures. needing to step up to the table’, then it becomes an
Both Siakimotu and Pacific Trade and Invest Australia’s environment where the two of them are working together.”
Trade and Investment Commissioner, Caleb Jarvis, identify
access to finance as another major impediment, not only for editor@islandsbusiness.com
agriculture, but for all exporters.
“Whilst I’m seeing some improvements and a recognition
of that really being the biggest challenge, it still remains the
number one issue for exporters and businesses in general
to grow their businesses and SMEs are in the middle. Big
businesses, big corporations have no trouble accessing finance
through the traditional modes, the private banks and other
debt-equity type instruments, micros are generally well
catered for in microfinance but generally to my mind the
interest rates are a bit too high on that, but the SMEs trying
to grow those businesses really still struggle because often
they don’t have the collateral and they don’t have positive
operating cash flow so really they’re risky for the bank," Jarvis
says.
One of the distinguishing features of PHAMA Plus’ approach
is its support for PPPs and the use of market access groups
to inform and progress its work. Siakimotu says this has
required building of trust and appreciation of the respective
jurisdictions of the public and private sectors.
“ In the Pacific …there’s a significant distrust between the
public and private sector. The private sector thinks that the
government wants to be involved in their job and they don’t
know what they’re doing, the public sector on the other hand
thinks that the exporters are in it for themselves and it’s not
about the small people or the communities that they want to Pacific kava farmer. Photo: PHAMA

Islands Business, March 2020 13