is that fiji once again has a credible and sustainable second broiler chicken producer that will reduce the requirement for fiji to import frozen chicken product. we hope that production will increase to cater for our south pacific island markets so that fiji ’ s foreign reserves position will be strengthened. concluding remarks colonial therefore deserves our collective commendation today. the colonial group has contributed well to the development of the fiji economy. it has a diversified portfolio with poultry rooster. i take this opportunity to wish mr. duncan, ms wood and mr. mellsop as well as the colonial team all the best in their future endeavours. official opening i have much pleasure in declaring new poultry rooster open and wish it well in its operations. thank you.

made a firm commitment that it would bring that down to below 50 percent of gdp and we wish them well in that endeavour. balance of payments however, the balance of payments remains a concern basically because of the poor performance of our tradition exports. collectively, exports of sugar, garments and gold are lower by $ 400 million from their peak year. and that is a lot of money to loose! this has been made worse by the rise in oil prices which broke above 90 us dollars per barrel recently. our major policy challenge is clearly to address our widening trade deficit. i am glad to say that we have seen some encouraging signs recently of stability in our level of foreign reserves. due to this improvement, the reserve bank yesterday announced relaxation on the payment of credit cards for expenditure abroad from $ 5, 000 to $ 10, 000 per month for overseas transactions. in addition, cash drawings from credit cards were increased from $ 200 to $ 1, 000 per month. delegated limits on advance imports payments were also raised from $ 15, 000 to $ 50, 000 per invoice. exports our policies of dampening import demand seem to be taking effect. however, the key is not so much to discourage imports but rather to grow our exports and we should continue to work hard at achieving this. to help exporters, the reserve bank has made changes to the export finance facility. this facility was designed to assist the export sector access credit at relatively lower interest rate. under the facility, the reserve bank will provide funds to the commercial banks and the fiji development bank at an interest rate that is aligned to the 182 day treasury bill market rate with a cap of 2 percent. this rate is currently below 1 percent. the commercial banks and fdb can then on - lend these funds to exporters with a maximum added margin of 4 percent which currently translates to about 5 percent. furthermore, the local value added content previously set at 40 percent has been removed. the loan eligibility amount under the preshipment lump sum facility has been increased from 20 to 50 percent and is now based on local value added content rather than total exports. the list of ineligible exports has now been extended to include re - exports. we hope that these changes will make the facility more attractive to commercial banks and exporters. details of this facility are available from the reserve bank, fdb and your commercial bank. 2008 economic growth a mild economic recovery of about 2 percent is expected in 2008. the major impetus is a rebound in visitor arrivals which