The business process outsourcing (BPO) has enormous potential to generate revenue for Fiji, says Minister for External Trade Cooperatives and SMEs, Manoa Kamikamica.
After taking up the mantle as a government minister, Mr Kamikamica said their plan was to keep the economy moving and growing, so the public could expect consistency of policy, collaboration and consultation in the days ahead.
“I’d like to understand the level of foreign direct investment in Fiji and how much really is coming from offshore in the Fijian economy,” he said.
“That’s key because it then creates employment, so these are things that we need to understand. If it’s low, then what can we do to facilitate it and there’s always discussions about tourism, but there are other business areas that we can look at, it’ll retain more dollar in Fiji. BPO is a classic example. The PS and the previous minister were quite keen in kicking that along, I was sitting on the BPO Council at that time so that’s an example of one area we should put focus on.”
Mr Kamikamica said through initial assessments, they found BPO out of Australia was more than $US30billion ($F67.06 billion).
“Just imagine if we land at least three, five or 10 per cent of that over the next five to 10 years. You create another big industry.
“These are the things that we need to look at and talk to the BPO Council. I know they’ve been working hard to keep things going and kind of made a lot of headway. So these are things that we like to get involved in this time.
“One of the secrets to successes in the private sector, you create the policy environment, you create the laws or the regulations that’s required, then you get out of the way and they do their thing. So that’s how we’re going to play. We’re going to try and get the economy moving.”
