$623m worth Projects in 2008

Timoci Vula

Fiji Times News - Tuesday, February 02, 2010

TWO hundred and eighty one projects valued at $623.8 million were implemented in 2008, and creating 2262 jobs for locals.

The Fiji Islands Trade and Investment Bureau (FTIB) says while this was a good achievement, this record included the implementation of projects that were registered in past years.

Chief executive officer Annie Rogers said this was also likely to include projects that had an actual implementation year other than 2008 but investors had failed to inform the FTIB that the project had been fully implemented in the relevant year and only did so in 2008.

To address this last year, she said the FTIB had focused strongly on making investors more aware that under the Foreign Investment Act (FIA), they must inform FTIB immediately by filling its mandatory declaration form that their project had started operations.

She also highlighted the monitoring of those investments that had been implemented. Ms Rogers said the monitoring process enabled FTIB to be aware of problems investors encountered and to be able to address their concerns in a timely manner.

She said they carried out 270 project site visits in 2008 to verify compliance with their registration conditions. She added visits were also conducted on businesses that wished to extend their business activities.

"Here, FTIB's focus is to facilitate and help make possible such proposed business expansions," Ms Rogers said.

She also revealed the FTIB issued three businesses with a notice to cancel and cancelled 20 foreign investment certificates after investors failed to comply with the conditions of approval.

"Of the 20 cancellations, some resulted from companies advising FTIB that they had ceased business operations, with the remainder arising as foreign investors had obtained naturalisation making the company a local business entity, which does not need FTIB registration and oversight," Ms Rogers said.