At least one leader of a small island nation also has raised concerns about the comment.
Clark made the comment after Fiji strongman Frank Bainimarama led Fiji’s boycott of the Forum on the grounds that Fijian leaders would not have been able to participate in post-forum dialogues in New Zealand because they were only issued transit visas.
Of New Zealand’s NZ$1 billion ($699,793 million) export trade with the islands, Fiji alone accounts for NZ $450 million ($314 million), making it the country’s largest Pacific island market.
Gilbert Ullrich, chairman of the New Zealand Pacific Business Council, managing director of Ullrich Aluminum and NBR Rich Lister, has expressed the business council’s concern at a possible deterioration of the long-standing bi-lateral trading relationship between New Zealand and Fiji.
“New Zealand is being selective when quoting that Fiji is heading to be another Zimbabwe,” he said. “Currently there is a downturn in trade with the Pacific region, which is only one of the two in the world where New Zealand has a trade surplus.”
Comments like the one made by the prime minister appeared to be exaggerated, “at least at this point in time” and didn’t help New Zealand’s trade relationships both with Fiji and the rest of the Pacific islands, Ullrich told NBR.
Fiji is a trading and logistic hub for many of the southern Pacific islands and comments like Clark’s, while undermining trade with Fiji, will also affect the larger region, Ullrich said.
Tuvalu Prime Minister Apisai Ielemia, told NBR his country’s only link with the outside world is Fiji, with which it has its sole international flight connectivity and from where it got most of its merchandise.
“We only hope that such comments don’t end up causing a wave of activism that will put pressure on New Zealand businesses to put curbs on trading with Fiji. Because if Fiji is cut off, we’re effectively cut off too — and for no fault of ours,” he said during his brief stopover in Auckland en route to Tuvalu from the Niue forum.
“Any curbs on Pacific trade may well be irreversible,” said Ullrich. “The NZPBC has observed that a number of New Zealand and Australian exporters and suppliers are now sharing the Fijian market with their Asian counterparts, mainly the People’s Republic of China.”
The business council feared that any gaps in trading would be quickly filled up by Asian exporters to the long-term disadvantage of New Zealand exporters, Ullrich said.
