FIJI – A Fiji economics professor says the imposition of retrospective laws on foreign landowners sends a signal that Fiji is not a safe place to invest.

But a real estate agent says Fiji is open for business and the changes will help weed out offshore speculators who did little to assist development.

British-born New Zealander, Arlette Rossi, bought an acre of land in Fiji 14 years ago with her husband.

She says they planned to build a retirement home when they could afford it, and can’t meet a requirement introduced in 2014 for foreign landowners to build a US$120,000 house within two years.

She says the retrospective nature of the Land Sales Act amendments is “scary”.

“If I knew now what was going on in Fiji, I would definitely have warned people not to invest there. If you had the money and could build in two years not a problem, but then what other law are they going to bring in down the track?

“Are they going to bring something else to make money out of foreign investors. I don’t know you just can’t trust them.”

The amendments are due to start biting soon for some of foreign landowners, with the prospect of hefty fines or imprisonment for those who fail to comply.

James Cook University Adjunct Professor Wadan Narsey agrees the law is unfair and is sending all the wrong signals to foreign investors.

“If you start applying restrictions on people who are not citizens then you are basically giving a signal to people out there, ‘okay, this is not a place where you can go and invest money safely’.”

Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum has stated the law was enacted because of concerns non-residents were buying freehold land and leaving it undeveloped for decades.

But that argument is refuted by Professor Narsey.

“In Fiji there is large amounts of land which are lying around idle, a lot of it is native lease and so on but there is also freehold land. There is no shortage of land.

“So having this legislation in place is not necessarily going to see any greater investment, if anything it is going to discourage investment even in other areas.”

But a real estate agent who specialises in the Fiji market, Rick Kermode maintains the law was brought in to crackdown on offshore speculators who did nothing with sections and pushed prices beyond the reach of locals.

The Auckland-based Fiji-born citizen says the changes have created some uncertainty and will have a downward effect on prices.

But he believes the overall outlook will be brighter for Fiji.

“Tourism is booming in Fiji. New hotels are being built in Nadi by the Chinese etcetera. The long-term goal is to see more integrated resort and residential developments, with the actual hope that people who do come and buy there will actually build on them.

“That’s far more beneficial to the Fiji people to see actual buildings built and people residing on those properties employing locals.”

Kermode says the real issue may be the law’s two-year timeframe for building a house, when the cyclone rebuild has placed an incredibly high demand on builders and materials.

He says at a recent symposium in Auckland the Fiji government indicated it is keen on investment, and there is a process for landowners to apply for an extension if required.

“The message is quite clear, they are open for business, they want to see more development in Fiji. And I’m of the opinion they’re happy to sit down and talk about those things if people can’t achieve what they need to achieve within those timeframes.”

Kermode says the law changes are the start of a process to better control the long-term development of Fiji, and there may be the “odd hiccup along the way”.

- Dateline Pacific