Aid Donors Cautious

Some cold shoulders awaited the South Pacific Tourism Organisation (SPTO) at a meeting it invited aid donors to in May to ask them for money for what it does. The drift of what it heard was that some donors don't like giving money to projects they suspect mainly benefit billion-dollar international hotel corporations who are very capable of funding the growth of their own businesses.
Professor Trevor Sofield, a tourism expert at the University of Tasmania in Australia, a guest speaker at a half-day donors forum organised by the SPTO, told donor representatives that it was a bad mistake to exclude or do little for tourism in running their aid programmes.

Tourism, said Sofield, has become one of the most effective ways of attacking poverty by creating businesses that put cash directly into the hands of people most needing it.

Robert Skews...SPTO chair.

In the South Pacific, he said, "tourism is the single largest generator of foreign exchange for the Cook Islands, Fiji, Niue, Micronesia, Palau, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu.

"It is very important in the micro-economies of Kiribati and Tuvalu despite the miniscule number of annual visitors, less than 7000 and 2000 respectively."

Tourism needs to be looked at afresh and developed as a sustainable tool for eliminating poverty, he said.

Supported by 12 Pacific Islands governments and now China as its first member from outside Oceania, SPTO estimates that it needs US$4.34 million to fund the 30 projects it hopes to execute during 2004-2007.

The European Union (EU), Japan, and some other donors have contributed US$639,000 for the 2004-2006 work programme and US$1,682,920 remains to be found.

SPTO funds its annual operating budget from members' subscriptions and revenue from the sale of some of its services. It remains dependent on donor aid for project funds.

The European Union has supported SPTO since its inception 15 years ago. But an EU official told the meeting: "It is hard to sell support for tourism to the donor community since it regards Mr Sheraton and Mr Outrigger as the beneficiaries."

EU support for SPTO had not been perfect, the official conceded. "There were many advantages but also a spotty scatter gun approach and probably the inputs were not monitored.

"We continue to support SPTO, but with a stronger emphasis on sustainability and focus on strategy."

The EU came close to dropping the SPTO several years ago because of doubts about its performance. "We hear from end users that it is beginning to be a useful organisation again," the EU official said.

An Australian aid official said his organisation had put money into tourism, including A$5 million into Tonga.

"The biggest contribution we can make as I see it is in policing, rule of law and security as the key issues. We have our hands full. If there is a whiff of trouble in the place (Pacific region), people are not going to come anyway."

Sofield said the region's national tourism promotion offices needed to persuade government ministers to accept tourism as an industry that should have a high development priority and it should be presented to aid donors as such.

John Perrottet, of the Pacific Enterprise Development Facility, an agency that assists the launch of businesses with technical advice, said officials of big international funding agencies had a "terrible fear" of funding individual private sector businesses.

"No matter how you cut the cake, some individuals are going to benefit. We should not recoil from that. Some private sector person will benefit. If they don't, we are going to accelerate poverty in that sector and pay the price."

Perrottet said that small businessmen throughout the Pacific Islands were "putting their lives on the line to create jobs. We and the donor community should consider them very seriously."