Tonga trade disadvantage under WTO, warns Crown Prince [1]
Wednesday, July 21, 2004 - 14:02. Updated on Monday, May 5, 2014 - 15:43.
The elimination of trade protectionism by the World Trade Organisation, in its quest to establish a global economy will confront Tonga with a tremendous trade disadvantage, warned the Prince Regent, Crown Prince Tupouto'a when he opened a three-day National Seminar on WTO issues on July 19, at the National Reserve Bank building, Nuku'alofa.
The Prince Regent reminded the gathering that the industrialised countries of the world built up their economies to where they are today with protectionism but, "now they believe that protectionism should be destroyed. Of course, it faces countries like Tonga with a tremendous disadvantage because it has never had the chance to apply the rule of protectionism."
The Crown Prince also pointed out that Tonga's neighbours of Australia and New Zealand also practiced a "predatory protectionism mechanism against Pacific Islands, preventing our manufacturing goods from entering their markets, keeping us in the state of banana and copra producing economies." The Crown Prince was adamant that this kind of attitude does not fit in with his personal plans and said that, "in the future there will be ways around this."
The Crown Prince praised local businessmen for the enormous amount of confidence that they have in the Tongan economy despite the fact that during the past four years, "our currency has done nothing but devalue, and our imports have done nothing but become more and more expensive. ... I think it is a tremendous achievement under the impact of such discouraging statistics that you still have confidence enough in the economy to invest year after year."
The Crown Prince believed that there were inequalities in the Tongan economy and that one of the reasons for this inequality was because of our Land Tenure System which denies half of the population the right of owning land. He thinks that the present Land Tenure System should be amended to make it possible for Tongans to hold not only hereditary land titles but also freehold land titles.
"I think this is the kind of issue which I expect the feed back from the commercial sector in Tonga in the near future, ... and we should reach out and make changes which we feel are appropriate immediately, now, and not later, and you should be pushing the government to make these changes," he said.