Investment Fiji – the premium Fijian government body for investment and trade promotion – had a change of mandate recently to help prepare home-grown companies to invest abroad in the global markets. Newly appointed CEO Kamal Chetty is tasked with leading this mandate.
The Indian Weekender spoke to Kamal Chetty to know more about the strategic vision and the plan of action for promoting the two-way bilateral trade between Fiji and New Zealand, and also how the Fijian diaspora in New Zealand can contribute in driving this key economic partnership.
Excerpts :
IWK: Can you please tell us more about the change of mandate for Investment Fiji, tasking it with the additional responsibility of facilitating Fiji’s investment in global markets?
Kamal Chetty: Earlier, Investment Fiji was an investment promotion agency and an investment monitoring agency. So, we were monitoring investment as well. Now we have taken that out of our mandate, which leaves us as a full-fledged investment and trade promotion agency that is going to assist investors or facilitate investors and try to attract the right kind of investment for Fiji.
We are now also working to prepare Fijian companies to foray into foreign markets. Recently, as you would know, a Fijian company has launched a new product in the New Zealand market, and there are many more with whom we are closely working to help them in their foreign market entry plans, including in New Zealand. We are focussing on Kava, timber and some other agriculture products, which we believe have a good chance in the New Zealand market.
IWK: There has been a lot of dynamism in Fiji’s economy ever since it came out of Covid pandemic-related lockdowns. Please tell us more about it.
Mr Chetty: We are very optimistic about the situation currently in Fiji. But let me put things in a global context, specifically in our space, there is still a lot of uncertainty, especially in terms of geopolitical situation, and it impacts Fiji as well.
But for Fiji, obviously, since we opened our borders quite early in the pandemic and were one of the first countries to do so in the Pacific has helped us in reviving our tourism sector.
Our economy has done really well, and the numbers have picked up. We have a lot of Australians and New Zealanders coming into Fiji, and the future looks promising.
In terms of overall economic activity in the country, you must have seen the latest release by Reserve Bank, there is a bit of optimism that the economy will grow at about 4.4%. And that's basically driven by a lot from tourism.
IWK: Recently, Fiji investment signed a memorandum of understanding with the ‘outsourcing industry’. Not many people here in New Zealand would know that Fiji is fast emerging as a global hub of the outsourcing industry. Can you tell us more about the growth of Fiji as a global outsourcing hub?
Mr Chetty: The outsourcing industry is not altogether new in Fiji, and we have had a vibrant outsourcing sector for quite some time owing to our competitive advantage globally in terms of neutral English-speaking accent, the time zone, low operating costs, high literacy rates and other factors.
However, the sector had played a key role in not only diversifying our economy (moving away from dependency on tourism) but also growing and giving employment during the Covid pandemic period.
I'm sure you've looked at recent releases from outsourcing Council and from us during COVID…It created 3000 new jobs in the country.
This is the reason we have signed an MOU with the outsourcing Council.
IWK: Tell us more about the recent business delegation visit by NZ Fiji Business Council to Suva and the business outcomes?
Mr Chetty: We've been really wanting to do this for last two years, but we couldn't because of Covid and closed borders, so it was really great to be able to meet face to face, and I think it was a very successful visit.
We had a one-week program where we went throughout the country, and there were a number of presentations, then there was a conference at the end of the forum that led to a lot of B2B meetings. In total, there were about 90 B2B meetings for different individual New Zealand and Fijian companies at the same time. There were a few registrations in the outsourcing space which is something very exciting for us.
IWK: What are the key areas of capability for Fiji companies? What are the sectors they can excel in overseas markets, including in New Zealand and Australia?
Mr Chetty: We have a clear strategic plan based on our study of Fiji’s competitive advantage where we have looked at different countries where we can export and can get investment out at the same time. We looked at sectors as a country where we have a competitive advantage, and by competitive advantage, I mean there is an ecosystem available.
As part of that strategy, we have also identified New Zealand as a key market with whom we have a special relationship because of the large number of our Fijian diaspora living in New Zealand. There are a lot of opportunities we can explore between the two countries.
Later in the year, we plan to take a business delegation to New Zealand and discuss ways of promoting investment in Fiji and helping Fijian companies find market access to New Zealand.