Govt. outlines financial centre, air traffic focus

By Staff Writer 05 February 2017, 12:00AM

The government is committed to developing its financial centre, the Samoa International Finance Authority (S.I.F.A). 

The ruling Human Rights Protection Party administration also wants to grow Polynesian Airlines in a bid to attract more tourists to Samoa.

That’s what Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi told Brian Caplen of The Banker during an interview where he talks about how the country has tackled money laundering concerns and how its is dealing with the pressures for the financial centre, S.I.F.A amidst international pressure.  

“The financial centre should play a very big role in Samoa’s development,” Tuilaepa is quoted as saying. “Ever since it was established in 1992, we have continued to grow. What happened was [that] because of its belated development, we tended to take the best experience of the other centres and avoid complex policies and try to maintain the good name of the financial centre.

“Of course, the centre has been facing many problems with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [O.E.C.D.] zeroing in on money laundering control and we were on the grey list for a short time. 

“But we have been to the international committees for [advice and oversight on] the control of money laundering. The money that the financial centre gets has been very useful to help with the funding of our budget but mostly it helps in the sponsoring of our sports.

 “One of the things with the international financial centre is the great competitiveness between centres to maintain the clientele. These clients are up to date with what they can get [in incentives] from the different centres, so they play us off one against the other. 

“The trust companies that are licensed here follow up on developments at all the centres and the moment a jurisdiction puts up a law to give itself a comparative advantage they immediately pick it up and advise our centre.”

Tuilaepa told The Banker Samoa has to update its own laws to stay competitive. 

“The essential thing the O.E.C.D. is after is to have disclosure of information on the activities and to ensure there is no money laundering passing through the centre. Ours is one of the most reputable centres.”

Tuilaepa also spoke about the importance of tourism and the need to address the challenge of air travel.

 “We have been very active recently in writing to airlines to [ask them to] use the centrality of Samoa's [geographical] position as a stop for the refuelling of long-distance flights to South America. We have excess room capacity here yet to be filled and all we need is more tourists to come,” he said.

 “We [Polynesian Airlines] have a joint venture with Virgin [Australia Airlines] and there are quite a lot of flights from New Zealand, but still we think it is not enough. 

“We are now looking at the possibility of having our own planes again. 

“Our joint venture is coming up for review and the feeling is generally that, subject to a review, we should fly our own planes once again [internationally].” (Polynesian Airlines got into financial difficulties and stopped flying internationally after the downturn that followed the terrorist 9/11 attacks of 2001.)

 “This would give a real boost to tourism because it’s quite possible that Virgin will still fly its planes in if we terminate our joint venture so that would mean extra flights and more tourists. 

“The first planes would be on a leasing basis. We do not consider that we should go all out. We would have to proceed very cautiously and restrict flights to the more profitable routes of New Zealand and Australia. It was when we flew to the US that we began to face problems. That’s where we should enter into a co-share with other airlines."

The Prime Minister believes more flights will bring in more visitors.

 “What we want to do is get more flights and more visitors in. As it is now, both Virgin and Air New Zealand are deliberately controlling the flights into Samoa to ensure that fares are raised as high as possible. The fares from here to New Zealand are extremely expensive and they are doing that by limiting the flights.”

Both Virgin Australia and Air New Zealand reject the claim from the Prime Minister, according to The Banker.

 “Virgin Samoa offers a range of highly competitive fares and holiday packages for travel between Samoa and both Australia and New Zealand,” a spokesperson for Virgin Australia is quoted as saying. 

“As joint venture partners for 10 years, Virgin Australia and the government of Samoa are undertaking reviews of the future of the joint venture. We look forward to discussing the outcomes of these reviews with the government in due course.”

Anna Cross, external communications consultant for Air New Zealand is quoted as saying there are a number of factors that determine fare prices. These include “operating costs, such as airport landing and navigation costs, and passenger demand for a particular route. 

“In the case of Samoa, we recently announced that due to strong demand we will operate an additional six flights between Auckland and Apia in late December [2016] – nearly 1000 additional seats on the route.”

Away from tourism and finance, the Prime Minister is also excited about the development of Information Technology (I.T.)

By Staff Writer 05 February 2017, 12:00AM
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