13-Sep-2010
Islands Business
“PACER-Plus is the most important economic negotiation that Forum Islands nations will undertake this decade, so you need to get it right.” So says Dr Chris Noonan, Chief Trade Advisor to Forum Islands Countries for the PACER-Plus free trade negotiations.
4-Aug-2009
Radio Australia
Australia has been hoping that this week’s Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting will approve the formal start of negotiations on the proposed PACER-Plus regional free trade deal. But for months Canberra has been rejecting growing claims by regional opponents of a deal that its been unfairly pressuring Pacific nations to agree to the process.
8-Jul-2009
Islands Busines
Out of the nine resolutions made by trade ministers in the Pacific at their meeting in Samoa last month, seven were said to be concessions to their bigger neighbours of Australia and New Zealand.
17-May-2009
Islands Business
Despite the existence of agreements among the Pacific island states, intra-regional trade has been low, mainly due to the massive distances and the lack of products to sell one another. In the words of an official of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat: “The islands are hardly going to sell a lot of coconuts and fish to each other.”
12-May-2009
Solomon Times
In the Pacific region, only Papua New Guinea and Fiji initialled an Interim EPA mainly to protect their exports of fish and sugar, respectively, into the EU markets.
10-Feb-2009
Islands Business
Governments in Australia and New Zealand are keen to assure Pacific nations that relations with the region are marked by ‘shared development goals’, but as Maureen Penjueli writes, the islands’ ‘big brothers’ have been pushing an agenda of their own—especially when it comes to negotiating a regional free trade agreement.