BY SAMIE WAIKORI
THE New Zealand Pacific Council is in Honiara on a trade mission to scout business opportunities with government and the local private sector.
The team held a two-day conference in Honiara which ended yesterday with discussions on how the two should partner in business.
New Zealand Pacific Council Team Leader, Mr Paul Pledge said it’s a privilege to come to Solomon Islands and engage with government and private sector to investigate business opportunities here.
He said the purpose is to establish a close link for private sector from NZ to work more closely with the private sector in Solomon Islands.
“It’s great for the team to get over to Solomon Islands and meet new people, build new relationship and create new business initiative.
“It is the first for this formal trade mission to come over to Solomon Islands and we have a mixture of businesses of people who do businesses here regularly and some haven’t been here before who look at doing businesses in Solomon Islands.
“The New Zealand Pacific Council has been around for twelve years, this is our first ever trade mission to Solomon Islands.
“The reason we chose Solomon Islands is we spoke to our members in New Zealand and lots of people have lots of questions around opportunities that are here in Solomon Islands,” Mr Pledge said.
He said hopefully New Zealand will increase the amount of businesses they do here as they have a good mixture of business.
Mr Pledge also said he works in international labour mobility and he supplies workers from New Zealand around the Pacific as well as bringing workers from Pacific to New Zealand.
“So it’s good to make new conduct with private sectors in Solomon Islands and build businesses relationship with them,” he said.
