|
No.1
Multilateral Agreement on Investment, the Millennium Round and the LLDCs
Dr Roman Grynberg
Multilateral Trade Policy Adviser
Forum Secretariat, Suva, Fiji Islands
Rules must be applied without fear or favour, but if they contain prescriptions that cannot be complied with by all, or if the results benefit too few, then injustice will emerge. Then it
is prudent to remember that no amount of rules or their enforcement will defeat those who struggle with justice on their side. That too is our experience and the experience of people everywhere.
H.E. Mr Nelson Mandela, President of the Republic of South Africa, addressing the Second Ministerial Conference of the WTO, 19 May 1998, Geneva
An exceptional success
The case of an export-oriented, locally-owned, small-scale
manufacturing firm in a small island country
Godfrey Baldacchino
Abstract: A useful approach for appraising the economic development potential of small, often island, territories is to look for those rare examples of elusive economic
success. Once they have been identified, one attempts to extrapolate what is idiosyncratic about the case at hand to a set of generalisable options. These then can
lend themselves to policy action and operationalisation. Economic success is here taken to imply local capital and local technological ownership, profitable small scale
manufacturing and export orientation. This paper sets out to demonstrate the potential of this inductive approach with a case study of a micro-enterprise from Viti Levu, Republic of the Fiji Islands.
The personification of social totalities in the Pacific
Alan Rumsey
Marshall Sahlins derives his account of Polynesian ‘heroic history’ in part from the fact that Maori and Fijian chiefs used the pronoun ‘I’ (first person singular) in reference to
their entire tribe or lineage. But similar usages are also attested from Melanesia. The Ku Waru region of the New Guinea Highlands provides one such case, from which I
develop a set of comparative dimensions that allow us to see what is similar and different among versions of ‘heroic I’ attested from around the Pacific. A description
is offered of a Ku Waru oratorical event in which it was used in a radically new way, and by women at that. I argue that this mode of pronoun use is best understood not as
an aspect of specific cultures or cosmologies, but rather as a referential practice allowing for the projection and contestation of an open-ended range of social identities and forms of agency.
An economic valuation of Fiji’s major natural ecosystems
Nicholas P Sisto
This paper starts from a general discussion on the importance—and difficulties—of placing monetary values on the ‘services’ provided by four natural marine and land
ecosystems. It proceeds to a review natural asset valuation methods and findings, mainly in the Americas and Southeast Asia, and concludes with a detailed application
of these methods to Fiji ecosystems. The author conservatively estimates the value of Fiji’s ecosystem services at over 40 per cent of the country’s GNP, and suggests that
a ten-fold increase in current environmental expenditure would be justified on economic grounds.
Parks, reserves and tourism: The Fiji experience
Timoci Waqaisavou
The establishment of parks and reserves is regarded by key elements of the tourism industry as a means of diversifying Fiji’s tourism product away from its current
dependence on sun, sea and sand. Increasingly, Fiji is unable to compete with destinations such as Hawai‘i, the Caribbean Islands and Queensland, which offer an
equivalent product but are located closer to the main tourist markets.
The concept of developing parks and reserves as tourist destinations is a comparatively new phenomenon in Fiji, even though Fiji was one of the first countries
in the Pacific region to establish a park and reserve system. Noting the affective significance of forest areas to Fijians, this paper looks at both the institutional and
legislative basis for the establishment of parks and reserves of various kinds in the Fiji Islands, and urges the potential benefit in terms of diversification of the tourist product.
The Small Claims Tribunal as an alternative dispute resolution mechanism in Fiji
Muhammed Taufil Omar
Alternative dispute resolution methods complement the formal apparatus of the state, widening the range of choice available for those who seek to finalise conflict. (Jeffries 1991:159)
Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is an optional method of determining a dispute. It provides a separate mechanism from the existing state apparatus to solve problems.
ADR can be divided into conciliation, mediation, counselling, arbitration and tribunals. Parties may employ any one of these schemes to resolve disputes without recourse to
litigation. This study introduces ‘Small Claims Tribunals’ as a method of alternative dispute resolution in Fiji. The advantages and disadvantages of the Tribunal as
compared to the civil court system are discussed and some suggestions made for improvement.
The profitability of the banking sector in Fiji
Michael White
The Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Industry set up in 1998 to examine aspects of the quality and costs of Fiji’s banking services delivered a report that was generally
critical of the banks’ operations and included recommendations for change in the industry’s operations.
Market competition, disputes regulation, quality of service and profitability of banks
An opinion survey on the findings and recommendations of the Committee of Inquiry into Financial Services in Fiji
M D Sharma and Pramendra Sharma
The report of the 1999 Committee of Inquiry into Financial Services in Fiji outlined 26 findings related to dissatisfaction felt by users of bank and financial services, and made
9 recommendations for improvements. Reactions amongst bank customers, the banks themselves and the general society ranged from overwhelming support to strong disagreement.
This paper develops a Findings Validation Model to produce an independent analysis of the validity of the report findings and recommendations. For responses of a
cross-sectional sample, a validation index indicating the level of agreement was calculated for each of the findings and recommendations, and a composite validation
index for each of four categories—market competition and regulation, quality of service, profitability, and recommendations—into which the individual items were grouped.
All except two of the findings and all of the recommendations returned a positive level of agreement, often in the very high range (i.e. seem to have been validated as
pinpointing authentic weaknesses in and grievances against the financial system, especially the banks). Criticisms shown to be valid include: that the banking market is
not competitive; that there is no independent channel for dealing with bank-related complaints; that the quality of service of banks is low and deteriorating; and that bank
profits are high, largely because of high interest rates on loans, and high fees and charges. The recommendations most strongly endorsed were that banks should
provide more information on their products and charges, and that there is urgent need for a banking ombudsman and a banking commission.
The validation process (i.e. developing the model and using it to analyse the data) that is developed in this paper may be used to achieve similar analytical objectives in
different social, economic and political environments.
Contradictory institutional structures and management control
The case of the Fiji Development Bank
Ruvendra K Nandan
The paper focuses on domination, contradictions and conflict, which the conventional literature on management control has tended to neglect, although they remain
inevitable features in social and organisational life. Domination and contradiction, being reproduced property of society, are viewed as structural concepts, against the
background of the elements of Giddens’s structuration theory. Giddens suggests looking for the contradictions that social practices embody rather than trying to
identify particular functions that they fulfil. In looking at management control, the paper draws on this ‘structurationist’ theme to create awareness of the existence of
domination and contradictions in the wider social order within which the Fiji Development Bank (FDB) is embedded, and the inherent contradictions between the
bank’s goals and the management accounting and control systems employed. It is argued that the social, political and cultural aspects of the wider social order are
contradictory to (or militate against) the FDB’s prime responsibility of development. The paper concludes with the argument that although management accounting and
control systems enable stretching of relations across time and space, they can only partially bind the organisational time and space, because of contradictions and conflict,
which can be reproduced in human interactions but can never be stabilised.
The accounting standard-setting process in Fiji
The appropriateness of processes and the relevance of issues
Kushilliya Wati and Nacanieli Rika
Current accounting practices have for the most part evolved in the environments of the commercial needs and cultures of developed western economies. More particularly,
the influence of Anglo-Saxon cultures on world accounting practices can be seen to predominate. The United States of America (USA) and the developed
Commonwealth nations (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom (UK)) are the societies with the largest endowments of professional accountants
relative to total population size. Professional bodies from these countries, with the exception of New Zealand, are predominant in the work of the International
Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) (Wallace 1990). Consequently the Anglo-Saxon accounting model and that of the IASC are essentially the same. (There are,
of course, other accounting models, notably the French Plan Comptable Général, the German Framework of Accounts and the Soviet Accounting Systems.)
Environmental accounting in Fiji
An extended case study of the Fiji Sugar Corporation
Sumit K Lodhia
This paper argues that accountants have the potential to play a crucial role in environmental management and reporting, through their managerial, performance
measurement and evaluation, auditing and reporting skills. An in-depth study is undertaken to review the environmental accounting practice of the only public
company in Fiji that discloses environmental information in its corporate annual report. The results indicate that environmental accounting in the Fiji Sugar Corporation (FSC)
focuses on legitimising the environmentally sensitive nature of the company’s operations rather than being an attempt to extend stewardship to the stakeholders that
may be affected by the company’s operations. There is also evidence of only limited involvement of accountants in the environmental management strategies of the FSC.
The findings suggest that voluntary attempts at environmental accounting may not necessarily lead to an improvement in the quality of life for everyone. Hence, it is
envisaged that the accountants’ skills can be utilised more effectively in environmental matters if appropriate legislation and standards are used to provide a regulatory framework for environmental accounting.
The aesthetics of ambiguities in accounting
A Fijian case study
Shanta S K Davie
The current method of accounting in general is quite meaningless.
Valuation makes no sense and the profit notion is not understood by the majority of the landowners. All these concepts like discounting, depreciating, etc. hold no meaning at all. (An FPL Area Manager, in an
interview)
Everything—whether proclaimed meaningful or meaningless—has meanings. (Bauman 1993: 175)
This paper is concerned with developing an understanding of the functioning of accounting in the financial restructuring of the Fiji pine industry as effected in the
creation of the Fiji Pine Limited company. By critically analysing the underlying basis of accounting thought, the paper not only highlights technical and conceptual
ambiguities associated with accounting, but also suggests why, despite the ambiguities, accounting appeals as a language in economic organisations. In doing so, the study
highlights the aesthetics (beauty) of ambiguities in accounting. In this paper accounting is defined as ‘A formal system with structural and behavioural characteristics whose
terms are expressed in fundamentally financial form, whose meaning is derived from the organisation of which it is an integral part’ (Laughlin & Lowe 1990: 15–16).
Tests of the random walk model
Evidence from a developing economy
Kevin T Berry, Tanweer Hasan and David O’Bryan
This study discusses the random walk model and three statistical methodologies to test it. The paper also shows the implications and importance of such a study in the
context of a developing economy, using Malaysian data. Test results indicate that stock prices in Malaysia do not conform to the random walk model
Extent of non-compliance with Fiji Accounting Standards
A survey of the public companies and statutory authorities
Kushilliya Wati Pathik
(Executive summary of unpublished Master’s thesis, University of the South Pacific, Suva)
Review of the published financial statements of 24 public companies and statutory authorities for the period 1980 to 1996 confirmed the existence of non-compliance
with several of the Fiji Accounting Standards. Possible reasons for this included weakness of the Fiji Institute of Accountants’ monitoring and enforcement capability,
inappropriateness of adopted standards, unwillingness to question authority and dislike of ambiguity in specifications. The significance of the non-compliance was considered
by testing users’ reactions to non-compliant and compliant reports. It was found that bank loan officers did on occasion modify decisions about extension of credit in the
light of financial ratios calculated from financial statements amended to comply with standards. This suggests that information presented in a non-standard manner can
produce a more favourable assessment of an organisation’s financial situation. The level of non-compliance was highest with standards requiring accountants to exercise
their own professional judgment in applying them. Yet the extent of non-compliance in Fiji does not appear to be greater than in Australia, New Zealand, the United
Kingdom and the United States. Future research could well investigate what has led to such a high degree of compliance with Fiji Accounting Standards. Recommendations
are made for improvements in professional development and in FIA’s capability to review standards and monitor compliance.
|
