The International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, an organization committed to ending poverty world-wide, has announced it will lend Solomon Islands’ tuna industry $10 Million to help revitalize its economy. IFC is the largest global development institution focused solely on the private sector. It aims to help developing countries achieve sustainable growth by financing investment, mobilizing capital in international financial markets, and providing advisory services to businesses and governments.

The loan will enable SolTuna Limited to upgrade its processing facility in Noro, Western Province, by adding cold storage capacity and by improving its company housing for employees. The funds will also allow SolTuna Limited to facilitate improvements to the wharf and waste-water treatment plant which were severely damaged during a 2007 tsunami.

Over 70 percent of the Solomon Islands population relies on subsistence agriculture. SolTuna Limited currently employs about 1,500 workers, the majority of whom are women. The IFC loan will help the company add approximately 500 more jobs over the next several years. SolTuna Limited produces canned tuna for local markets and exports throughout the South Pacific and Europe. SolTuna Limited is  owned by National Provident Fund of Solomon Islands, Western Province Executive, Investment Corporation of Solomon Islands and Tri Marine.

Of course, this is a difficult situation. On the one hand, we can read IFC’s efforts to infuse money into the Solomon Island economy a valiant act; on the other hand, what is the cost of this effort in terms of the tuna fisheries around the Islands. The world-wide tuna fishery is one of the most fragile fisheries on the planet. Expanding the technological capability of a company to increase its tuna processing seems a risky way to improve a country’s economic status. This is certainly one of those difficult instances in which we have to ask the hard questions like, “at what cost?”

FISH ON!

 

 

fish, Fishing, Solomon Islands, tuna

By Sid

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