Fiji reserve bank devalues currency
Updated
Fiji's Reserve Bank has ordered the immediate devaluation of the country's currency by 20 per cent. The bank says the move is necessary to protect Fiji's economy from the global financial crisis, and to bring the Fiji dollar in line with trading partners, like Australia and New Zealand. But its statement on the move was highly censored - just as censored as Fiji's media has been since the country's constitution was scrapped last week.
Presenter: Campbell Cooney, Pacific correspondent
Speaker: Frank Yourn, chief executive, Australia Fiji Business Council; Toke Talagi, prime minister of Niue and chairman of the Pacific Islands Forum
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COONEY: Tourist operators have already applauded the move, hoping it will bring in more overseas holiday makers. The Australia Fiji Business Council represents businesses with millions of dollars invested in Fiji. Chief executive Frank Yourn says Fiji's dollar was overvalued but he's not sure a 20% drop in what it's worth was the solution Fiji needs.
YOURN: Its certainly hefty and I wouldn't have thought that on the basis of the currency having been acknowledged as overvalued for some time that 20% was necessarily the right figure.
COONEY: In Fiji the move was attacked. Former interim finance minister and one-time prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry has told reporters the devaluation will create more problems than it will solve. Those comments appeared in Fiji's online media. Just as quickly they disappeared. That censorship extended to the Reserve Bank's statement which has no mention of the fact the bank's governor Savenaca Narube had been sacked the day before but Mr Yourn says the business world is worried.
YOURN: In most military training you don't spend much time doing economics. It's certainly worse than the 1987 coup and the 2000 coup.
COONEY: When he scrapped the constitution on Friday, president Ratu Josefa Iloilo said Fiji won't be ready for elections before 2014. The leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum had given Fiji a deadline for an election date this year to be set by May 1 or face suspension. Forum chairman Niue Premier Toke Talagi says that suspension now looks inevitable.
TALAGI: My belief for the present moment is that it could very well be that we would be looking at suspending the interim administration.
COONEY: And Premier Talagi says for the first time the forum is investigating moving the forum secretariat.
TALAGI: Given the current situation I've instructed the forum secretariat and I've also advised the leaders that's what I've instructed the forum secretariat to do.
COONEY: Meanwhile the interim government has shut off one of the country's few remaining sources of uncensored news. Since 2004 Radio Australia has had two FM relays in Fiji - one at Nadi, the other broadcasting to Suva. But early on Wednesday, soldiers joined staff from the Ministry of Information in escorting local technicians to both transmitters and they were shut down. Radio Australia is still transmitting to Fiji on shortwave but the director of ABC International, Murray Green, says the shut down is a disappointing move.
GREEN: The notion that one can have a press that only reports part of what's happening is a notion of the press and the media that we certainly don't share.
COONEY: To fill the gap left by the censor's pen - and banned from leaving blank pages Fiji's newspapers are starting to get creative. In its latest edition the Fiji times decided it was worth hearing what's happening crimewise in Levuka - one of the country's smaller and more remote townships: "Levuka is calm, Constable Warne Rokodi from Levuka police station said life was normal in Levuka. There were no robberies, accidents or any major incidents. Things here are calm and usual is what we can say, he said." And, tongue firmly in cheek, the latest edition of the Fiji daily post includes the headline: "Paint Dry. Paint has apparently dried on his old couch. It just went on wet but after about four hours it started to dry. The young scholar observed. Fiji Daily Post asked Max if he intended to do more painting. Oh yes, he replied. I like watching paint dry." If nothing else Fiji's media is maintaining a sense of humour.
