Erosion or landslide?

Ratu Sir Ganilau, Fiji's Minister of Tourism, has said: "We need tourism in Fiji and we welcome it....because of our high unemployment figures. We recognise that some erosion of our traditional social fabric is inevitable in the pursuit of economic prosperity and we are prepared to accept a degree of erosion."

Unfortunately that slight erosion threatens to become a landslide. The tourist industry just cannot be controlled that easily. In Fiji all the tourist facilities are owned by outsiders. The South Pacific Properties Group, one of the biggest developers of tourist projects has only British, Hong Kong, American and Australian interests involved. In Fiji the airlines have hotel chains, overseas conglomerates have hotel and car hire firms, banks have a finger in the pie of most tourist developments. Inevitably there will be times when a company's interests run counter to the aims of a developing nation's government — or more significantly, to the needs and hopes of its people. It is at such times that tourism will be revealed as tied aid of a most oppressive variety, liable to be switched on or off according to the desires of directors or shareholders who may be thousands of miles from where the action is.

Last year the Minister of Finance in Fiji was led to boast: You have only to look around at what is going on at present, there are more hotels now being built than ever before....and more construction of commercial buildings than at any one time."

But the questions that need to be asked are: Who owns these new growth industries? How much local capital participation is involved in them?