Commentary

And contrary to Robinson's assessment, the record will show that Samoa's economy has grown significantly in recent years, as have also the living standards of its people.

Robinson is right that there has been decline in Samoa's ability to export. But the origins of that decline lie elsewhere, not in aid polices. At the time of independence, Samoa exported cocoa beans and copra to Europe, and fresh bananas to NZ. The volumes were small by world standards; some 20,000 tons of copra, five tons of cocoa beans, and about one million crates-56 pounds in weight-of bananas annually, but they largely met Samoa's equally depressed import requirements.

Samoa clearly enjoyed a comparative advantage in exporting these agricultural commodities. But as international circumstances changed, so did Samoa's ability to continue the trade. Once New Zealanders were introduced for instance to the impeccably packaged bananas from the factory farms of the U.S. fruit companies in South America, that was the end of the banana trade from the Pacific Island countries who used to supply New Zealand.

The South American bananas may have tasted like plastic and grown with mountains of pesticides and chemical fertilizer, but it was the preferred choice of the NZ consumer. Small island growers simply could not compete. The reason the boats started returning empty from Samoa, as Robinson said, is that New Zealand could always obtain anything Samoa can grow or make, more cheaply and more easily from other places, and it did. It is called free trade, and New Zealand is one of its strongest exponents.

It is this disparity in economic competitiveness that had the European Union impose a 20 percent tariff on European imports of South American bananas to give its traditional suppliers in Africa and the Caribbean a chance to survive. Pacific banana growers had no such help and were soon run over over.

The same applies to Samoa's exports of coconut and cacao products. Weak demand as industrialized nations turned to subsidized local alternatives, poor returns, deteriorating terms of trade, the occasional cyclone and official ineptitude all add to an inability by small places like Samoa to compete in the brave new world of free and open competition. The result is a very weak export sector dominated by fresh fish followed by beer, some textile items and miscellaneous agricultural produce.

Samoa at independence was an impoverished Least Developed Country with a per capita income of less than US$800, with very poor economic prospects. The country's physical infrastructure was threadbare; an airstrip built by U.S. forces during the war, no deep draft harbor, and services such as electricity, roads, and running water confined to Apia, a ramshackle collection of old wooden buildings built mostly during German times.

Today, Samoa's per capita income is US$2,000 and rising as the economy turns over at a steady 3-4 percent annually. Electricity, an arterial road system, telephones, and running water are available in most parts of the country, while modern shipping and aviation services connect Samoa to the rest of the world. The transformation is such that, Samoa has been touted a model place with a de-regulated and open economy that promotes private sector growth and investment.

If that is the description of an African styled basket case as Robinson called Samoa, then the African countries must be doing just fine.

The foundation of all this, are remittances from Samoans overseas, foreign aid, fresh fish exports in more recent years, and a small but growing tourism industry. In 2004 for example, overseas Samoans remitted more than $200 million, foreign aid grants amounted to $70 million and tourism close to $200 million. Exports earned $31 million, mainly from fish.

Critics suggest that remittances and foreign aid are another form of dependence. But the reality is that foreign aid and remittances are a natural product of today's global interdependence, at least for small economies like Samoa with few economic advantages, and a surplus of labour that is willing to work offshore and send money home.

Remittances occur because of the dynamics and strength of the Samoan family, and because Samoans are able to access the high wage economies of Pacific rim nations such as New Zealand. In place of goods and services, it is labor that is exported. In return is a flow of remittances, the value of which has risen every year in spite of predictions about their imminent demise. These remittances have contributed hugely to Samoa's foreign exchange earnings, not to mention the disposable incomes of the recipients.

Other Pacific Island nations also benefit from remittances, and regional leaders have been suggesting migrant workers as part of the Pacific Plan for that reason.

Aid also plays a significant part in the economies of Pacific Island countries, as Robinson has said. In the case of the remaining territories of former colonial powers, the aid would be one of the rewards of being part of a bigger and more affluent nation. One imagines that it is an arrangement that suits the interests of both parties.

The relationship between these colonies and their colonial masters should not be confused however with aid to independent countries like Samoa. Aid to Samoa represents about 10 percent of its gross domestic product, and is strictly earmarked for the development of the country's human capital and economic and social infrastructure, a necessary part of nation building and development.

But will foreign aid and remittances last? For remittances, the answer is yes. Samoans are Samoans and high wage economies are more accessible than ever before because of labour shortages and aging populations there. The large numbers of people who seek to emigrate every year do so for a variety of reasons, not necessary because of conditions at home, in the same way New Zealanders leave their own country in droves, in spite of its many attractions.

As for foreign aid, it has become a permanent part of relations between rich and poor nations. In a winner-take-all global economy, foreign aid is a necessary means of redistributing part of the winnings, in the interest of peace, security and economic equity. A shrinking world sharply divided into winners and losers, and haves and have-nots, is not a safe place, in the same way that an impoverished South Pacific region is not in the best economic and security interests of Australia and New Zealand.

The South Pacific region takes $1 billion worth of New Zealand exports every year at present, and only a fraction of that amount in aid.

Commentators such as Robinson may also wish to reflect on the fact that Pacific Iisland communities are among the most vulnerable groups to the destructive effects of climate change. They have also contributed the least to its cause. Tropical cyclones in the region have increased substantially in intensity and frequency. A significant part of the aid given is either for cyclone reconstruction or for natural disaster preparedness.

Aid policies and their administration leave a great deal to be desired, as Robinson points out. Aid is often poorly used, or recycled back to the donors through aid tying. Governance levels are poor, but these are societies in transition, only recently emerged from colonial rule, and still learning the intricacies of modern government. In fact a large part of aid is directed to addressing weaknesses in governance. But to suggest that Pacific Islands exist on aid handouts underplays the problems these communities face in coming to grips with nationhood and underdevelopment. At the very least, it is irresponsible journalism.

Conventional concepts of economic development and economic independence lose their usual meaning at the level of many of the small Pacific Island countries, with the stark reality of their smallness, threadbare resource base and removal in time and space from the rest of the world.

It is one of the reasons the usual economic prognosis about freeing up land in these semi-subsistent communities can end up doing much more harm than good. Take Samoa, for example, where communal land ownership is one of the pillars of the way people live. Changing land ownership as Johnson suggests runs the risk of seriously undermining that way of life, but without the promised economic rewards.

The extent of any economic benefit to be had from land cultivation in Samoa was perhaps best summed up by Dr. W. Solf, the governor of German Samoa more than a hundred years ago. Fighting off demands by German planters for Samoan land, he said then that every square inch of these islands can be fully cultivated, and it would not make an inch of difference to the economy of Germany. It is an assessment that remains truer than ever before, given Samoa's diminished ability today to export almost any product of that land.

But Dr. Solf also understood the value of land to Samoans and their own survival. He added then that alienating Samoan land would in time turn Samoans into paupers in their own country. With the winner-take-all capitalist money economy progressively replacing what is largely a subsistence way of life still, the risk Dr. Solf saw of Samoans being parted from their land and becoming paupers today is very real indeed.

Changing New Zealand's land system may have been desirable for the newcomers there as Robinson says, but it was a disaster for the indigenous people.

Samoa has been one of the success stories in the Pacific in recent times, a judgment that others have made. Foreign aid, invested properly in human and resource development, has played a part in that story. It is a story of a small island nation with few economic advantages, finding a niche in a winner takes all trade regime. It is about adaptation to global interdependence, and to a competitive environment that holds few advantages for small Pacific Island economies.