‘Key to lifting of travel restrictions was quarantine free travel’
THE members of the Fiji Commerce and Employers Federation are very excited with the lifting of the travel restrictions as this will open up more opportunities for the manufacturers, retailers and hardware companies to be able to start businesses again, after almost 18 months.
This was according to the CEO of the federation Kameli Batiweti who added the key to this opportunity was quarantine free travel.
“And so, fortunately, government has allowed them to come in spend two or three days in the resort before they are allowed to move around,” he said.
“That’s great because you add three days to the number of days they want to come and stay here, it means they’ll stay a bit longer, which means there’s a lot more employment ability for the employees of the resorts and hotels.
“And it means that our members and the private sector can trade more with the hospitality industry.”
The retail and manufacturing sector in particular, were two sectors looking forward to the reopening of the borders.
Mr Batiweti said the manufacturers would have to ramp up their manufacturing capability to be able to produce the goods which were necessary for Fiji and even for the Pacific Islands.
“So we have some of our members who export to all the Pacific Islands and also to Australia and New Zealand.”
He said the federation was looking forward on behalf of its members to the opportunity of ramping up trade between New Zealand and Fiji.
“David Dewar, who’s the trade commissioner, works very closely also with Fiji Commerce and Employees Federation,” said Mr Batiweti.
“And so the whole objective is to provide insights on what’s available in New Zealand and to give an opportunity to our members to be able to collaborate with the New Zealand businesses.
“The trade between the two countries, Fiji, is like 33 per cent of their total portfolio, so Fiji is key to the New Zealand businesses and so is New Zealand businesses key to Fiji businesses.
“And so it’s now just pointing out what are some opportunities, what are some roadblocks that we can work with our government to sort of work towards improving on the trade between the two countries.”
Members of the federation were complying with the measures in place as, according to the CEO, there were sanctions associated with non-compliance and companies did not want to spoil their names nor pay a fine.
“So it’s better to be compliant and to benefit from the business as they go along.”