Results for Business

Alcatel's cable ship CS Lodbrog is set to arrive in Tonga on Tuesday, 6 August, after a delay in Fiji for over a week, due to an issue with its right hand propeller.

Starlink has been granted a “provisional temporary permit” to operate in Tonga, MEIDECC announced today, 19 July. This was in response to a “significant amount” of public concern after the Tonga government instructed Starlink to cease its services in Tonga, stated MEIDECC CEO Sione 'Aka'oula.

Last Tuesday 9 July, Tonga's communications Regulator, MEIDECC, notified Starlink, the global satellite internet network, to cut off all services to its roaming subscribers across Tonga's land and seas. The government will not allow the use of Starlink in the current ongoing communications crisis in Tonga, because they have not given Starlink's fixed broadband services a license to operate here. The regulator is not allowing the roaming services either, after the nation's domestic fiber optic cable failed on 29 June. “With understanding of the inconvenience, at the same time the law cannot be put aside just because you have slow internet,” the Prime Minister told Starlink users yesterday, many of whom had raised safety concerns.

A total communications failure on Tonga's only inter-island domestic submarine cable has disrupted normal telephone and internet services to the outer islands since 29 June and it is likely to be several weeks before it is known how long it might take for normal services to be restored. In the meantime, the local providers are running on low bandwidth satellite links with limited capacity. It is Tonga's third major internet outage, following the severely disruptive national and domestic cable blackouts in 2019 and 2022.

The Minister for Trade & Economic Development Hon. Dr. Viliami Uasike Latu and his Ministry launched the first National Standardisation Roadmap for Tonga today, 19 June, at the Liku’alofa Centre, Tofoa. This roadmap will help to implement quality standards for development in Tonga, in partnership with Pacer Plus and Standards Australia.

Tonga’s watermelon export crops will soon benefit from smart irrigation systems and improved cold storage, following a new partnership signed between Nishi Trading Company Limited and the Pacific Horticultural and Agricultural Market Access Plus (PHAMA Plus) Program, supported by Australia and New Zealand.

A mei (breadfruit) festival was held to celebrate the versatility of breadfruits as stable and resilient food crop for Tonga, with the theme, “Our actions on Mei for Health, Education and Economic Development are our future.”

Tonga Power Ltd. expects to invest around $45 million pa'anga over the next fiscal year (2024-25) on upgrading its power generation. New strategic plans to improve electricity services and provide more affordable electricity prices, were announced by the board on Friday.

Wholesale prices for petroleum in Tongatapu increased on 18 April to $3.4616 seniti per litre while the retail price remained the same as March, capped at $3.60 pa'anga per litre. The new pricing means that petrol retailers must absorb the latest increase in the wholesale price of petrol and may not pass on the increase to their customers.