Pacific countries should sell tuna to Aust, NZ: Official

Business

PNG and other Pacific Island countries need to work together to export tuna to Australian and New Zealand markets, an official says.
Chief executive officer of iTuna Intel and Pacific Catalyst Dr Transform Aqorau said, during a seminar organised by the Institute of National Affairs yesterday, that the market value for tuna in the Pacific was worth US$6 billion (K21.09 billion).
“We should be seeking a bubble of trade to open up some economic pathways for our produce into Australia and New Zealand,” he said.
“We should be thinking more integrated union with our tuna and maybe thinking about being an integrated producers region.
“That means looking at all the constraints which there has to be some analytical work done to see how this can be done.”
Dr Aqorau said Australia and New Zealand were the not selling canned tuna from PNG or the Solomon Islands yet they were the closest markets.
“They are buying canned tuna from Thailand which actually contains raw materials caught in the Pacific Islands,” he said.
“So something is actually quite wrong.
“We should be saying to Australia and New Zealand: Let us produce you canned tuna for your market in PNG and in the Solomon Islands.
“These are the opportunities that we are not capturing.”
Dr Aqorau said there is also a political underpinning in relation to the importance of Tuna in the region notwithstanding the issues that the Pacific Island Forum leaders are facing.
“Tuna is the only shared resource that we have.”
He said currently PNG and the other Pacific Island countries did not get 100 per cent economic benefits from its Tuna because most of the catch were processed offshore.