barry whiteside : bank south pacific group expansion in fiji opening address by mr barry whiteside, governor of the reserve bank of fiji, on the occasion of the rebranding of dominion house to bsp life centre, the opening of the bsp life ’ s customer service centre, and the opening of the bsp ’ s thomson street branch, suva, 4 october 2012. * * * his excellency, the president, rau epeli nailatikau the first lady, adi koila nailatikau mr kevin mccarthy, bsp fiji country manager mr malakai naiyaga, managing director, bsp life limited board members of bsp life limited and bank south pacific management and staff distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen introductory comments bula vinaka and a very good evening to you all. i wish to thank kevin and malakai for their kind invitation to yet another significant event in the relatively short history of bsp ’ s operations in fiji. it is indeed a privilege to be here to support your development initiatives and i welcome your ongoing rebranding & refurbishment programme in fiji. it definitely is another sign of the bsp group wishing to further stamp its mark as a major player in the market and is a real vote of confidence for fiji ’ s economy and our domestic financial system. the bsp fiji group we are actually here today to celebrate three different milestones : ( i ) the re - branding of this dominion house complex to bsp life centre ; ( ii ) the opening of bsp life ’ s customer service centre ; and ( iii ) the renaming of the refurbished bank operations to bsp thomson street branch. the bsp fiji arm of the group has an impressive pedigree. it is a union of two prominent fijian financial institutions, colonial fiji life limited and colonial national bank, which were acquired by bsp in december 2009. colonial fiji life limited, which used to be known as colonial mutual life assurance society ( or more simply as just cmla to us older folk ), was founded in melbourne in 1873, and almost simultaneously opened offices in several other centers in australia. a branch office was opened in fiji in 1876 and i understand that this was the first overseas branch of colonial mutual, before the company opened up in new zealand and south africa in 1883, and expanded into great britain and ireland in 1886. the company officially demutualised in 1996 after acquiring blue shield ( pacific ) limited in 1991. the colonial business was domesticated in

. not only the poor. of course, the poor will be more affected because of the impact on food prices and so on but there may be some safety net to assist. maybe those people who are on welfare and so on, the government may have to look at some options to support them. but where possible i would urge our people, especially our rural people, in the villages and the islands and so on, already they are quite self - sufficient, but they should become more self - sufficient in terms of local food and fruits. people should rely less and less on imported items. question 6 : how can we grow the economy to ensure long - term sustainability? answer : investment is critical to that process. as you know our level of investment is not very high. it reached about 20 - 22per cent of gdp in 2004 - 2006 but since then has fallen to around 15 per cent of gdp. we need to raise our investment to 20 to 25per cent of our gdp. that ’ s a big challenge and there are a lot of issues, which come into investment. we are trying our best to increase investments. last year government announced a number of initiatives to promote investment. we have to provide the right environment for investment to take place. now, there are some elements missing. in this regard, with devaluation now out of the way, it provides a very stable financial environment for people now to consider investing. i would urge business sector to concentrate on business. fiji goes on, we live on, we increase investment, our people have to survive, and we have to grow our economy. there is no choice. we have to invest and make the most of it. i have now provided the right kind policy environment for investment to increase. in this regard, let me explain a little bit more ; we not only devalued the currency, we also acted on interest rates. the interest rate environment is now also stabilized. i have been very concerned about interest rates in the country. let me explain this particular policy because to me this is more important than devaluation. we invited the banks last year at the time of the national budget preparation, and had one on one discussion with the chief managers. we said, look we are going through this very difficult time. every country is going through difficult times. all sections of the community need to get together as partners and assist in this growth process. we pleaded with the commercial banks to play a key role in this and they