World of opportunities

In many parts of the developed world, there is nothing you cannot do online. You can borrow a book from the local library online; buy a magazine online; order your groceries online and have them delivered to your home; in fact, buy almost anything online and have it delivered to your home, from a 75-inch TV to a washing machine. You can buy flowers, chocolate and champagne online and have them delivered to someone else’s home as a gift. You can buy and sell your house online, or write your will online. You can ‘binge-watch’ television boxsets online. These services are almost completely absent from the Fiji market. Buying a meatlovers pizza from Eagle Boys Pizza involves driving to Damodar City, fighting through the traffic for a parking space, ordering and waiting 20 minutes for the pizza, and then fighting your way out of the carpark and driving home, getting here just as the referee has blown the final whistle for the rugby game you had planned to watch with your takeout meal. However, the Government’s investment in the submarine cable system, the liberalisation of the telecommunications market which has driven both innovation and intense price competition and the rollout of the Walesi services and the digitalFIJI wifi hotspots, has created the conditions for a wave of technological innovation as entrepreneurs race to adapt business models from elsewhere to the Fiji market. Already we have ‘Vodo’, loosely

based on the Uber ride-hailing service, and ‘CyberFood’, an Uber Eats inspired food delivery service. Both are in their early days, but the trend is clear. To fully unlock the potential of e-commerce, Fiji will require a universal online payments system. Many retailers in Fiji routinely charge 2-3 per cent commission on credit card sales; one store in Nabua recently charged me an eye-watering 5 per cent to pay with a local Visa card. However, the recent move to allow citizens to pay for public services online and the Government’s rollout of EFTPOS machines to small retailers will lay important foundations for the day when, as in the UK and New Zealand, the economy becomes cashless and every transaction can be made online.” But there is more to digitalFIJI than enabling Fijian to sell each other fast-food more conveniently. A digital connection to the world means that you can sell a pizza from a business in Damodar City to a household in Vatuwaqa as easily as you can sell an online service from a business in Toorak to a company in Sydney. Fiji National University has a deepening partnership with a relatively young company called Pherrus Pty (Fiji) Ltd. Based in Suva, its team of accountants and administrators prepare and file the tax accounts of Australian companies and individuals who live in New South Wales. In this business, they enjoy a huge cost advantage over rivals based in expensive office blocks in Sydney’s CBD. Through this partnership, Fiji National University trains CPA (Australia) qualified accountants, who have the professional credentials to advise and prepare tax accounts for Australian clients. But in principle, companies like Pherrus could deliver any business service – insurance, brokerage, consultancy, payroll, logistics, customer support – that can be performed remotely. Provided these businesses have access to well-qualified, English-speaking employees and good digital connections, they can broaden the range and scale of the services offered. Australia, New Zealand and all of East Asia are within a few hours of our time zone. With a perfectly feasible shiftwork system, consultants in Suva can advise clients in Perth, just four hours behind Fiji time, of their tax liabilities or the progress of their insurance claims. For all these reasons, Fiji National University welcomes the continuing investment announced in the Budget Statement in our country’s digital infrastructure and capacity. Despite the fiscal consolidation forced by an increasingly fragile global economy, the Budget allocations to digitalF IJI, Walesi, and the Savusavu Cable System, coupled with the continued liberalisation of the telecommunications market, the move to online sales of government services and greater use of online payment schemes in the private sector, bode well for a continuing levelling of the global playing field.”