Pacific exporters surveyed

The first ever survey of Pacific exporters has just been launched.

The aim is to get a detailed picture of opportunities and challenges for Pacific businesses so trade ministers from Pacific Islands Forum countries can better target their action to support exports.

The survey is being co-ordinated by regional business and tourism promoter, Pacific Islands Trade and Invest, based in Sydney.

The company’s senior trade and investment commissioner Caleb Jarvis said the initiative is ground breaking.

“We are in a region where there is lots of exciting exports happening but there is a complete absence of good quality data out there, in particular about exporters and tourism operators so we expect that the data from this survey is really going to assist us creating solutions in the future.”

The data collection exercise is being undertaken by the Sydney-based market research firm ACAResearch, which has formulated questions on pacificexportsurvey.com, targeted towards attaining more information about exporters in the region.

“We need to get a snapshot about who are the Pacific island exporters so in terms of size of business, where they reside, what type of products they sell, where they are currently exporting,” Jarvis said.

“There is wide difference in terms of, you know, there are big mining and exploration companies exporting huge volumes of mining and energy type commodities out from the region – and at the other end of the spectrum we’ve got small vanilla farmers who are exporting directly to markets in Europe and Japan and Australia.”

Jarvis says there are significant challenges in getting enough exporters to complete the survey.

He says the efforts would require the assistance of regional agencies such as business chambers, councils, national tourism offices, government departments and investment promotion authorities. -- SYDNEY