Marshall Islands President Litokwa Tomeing, Japan Embassy Charge d’Affaires Kazuyuki Ohdaira and Fiji-based head of Japan International Cooperation Agency’s Pacific region office Juichiro Sasaki signed agreements for the project in Majuro at the weekend.
Although the Marshall Islands is eligible each year for large-scale Japanese infrastructure aid, this is the first major Japan-funded infrastructure project since 2004, when Japan approved a $9 million grant for new facilities at Majuro hospital.
“Japan’s average fisheries grants are smaller than this project,” Ohdaira said at the brief signing ceremony. “We are convinced this fish market center will improve greatly the living standard of fishermen and consumers.”
Sasaki said the fish market center and the vessels will “help promote fisheries in the outer islands” that have few income generating options.
Fishermen on the remote atolls of Aur, Arno, Jaluit and Maloelap will feed reef fish into Majuro for sale in the capital, which has an urban population of about 30,000 — approximately half the population of this western Pacific nation.
The mainstay for people living on remote islands is copra — dried coconut meat — that is cut, bagged and shipped to Majuro for processing into cooking, beauty and fuel oil. There is almost no opportunity for small-scale local commercial fishing on remote islands because of the distance to the urban centers and lack of ocean transportation.
“This will open more opportunities for local fishers,” said Fredrick Muller, the minister of resources and development that will oversee the fish market.
While encouraged by the new Japan fisheries grant, a local businessman pointed out that the Marshall Islands has lost out on close to $50 million in construction funding from Japan through lack of action over the past nine years.
“The Marshall Islands is eligible for a $6 million to $10 million annually in major infrastructure projects from Japan, but we haven’t had one project in five years,” said Jerry Kramer, the CEO of Majuro-based Pacific International Inc., which has just won the largest-ever construction contract in the Federated States of Micronesia at $27.5 million for a road paving project that broke ground Friday.
A total of $30 million to $50 million has been available since 2000 but — with the exception of the Majuro hospital project approved in 2004 — the Marshall Islands “hasn’t taken advantage of it,” said Kramer, who encouraged the government to push a construction agenda with Japan.
JICA will put the fish market project out to tender in the next three months, Sasaki said, with construction expected to start in January 2010. It will take about one year to complete, he said.
