Small Businesses in Pacific struggle with start-up costs

Transcript

Small businesses in the Pacific that find it hard to get going with start-up costs and accessing finance will soon be hearing about new options.

The Asian Development Bank held a Pacific Business Media Summit in Sydney last week, with the view to bringing in media groups and facilitating a discussion on how the media can inform businesses on what's available.

Journalists and broadcasters contributed to the discussion, and Alex Perrottet caught up with some of them.

A major revolution is happening in the Pacific, with businesses registering online and keep their details up to date far more efficiently than before. The registers are being rolled out across the Pacific, thanks to the ADB and the New Zealand Companies Office. The Director of AUT University's Pacific Media Centre, Professor David Robie, was the only journalism educator at the summit, and says the register may also overcome the challenge media face of a lack of freedom of information laws.

DAVID ROBIE: This is a major breakthrough in the Pacific especially when there's only one country in the region that has a freedom of information law, the Cook Islands, through having a public companies register online, we're actually getting quite a bit of freedom of information in the commercial sector.

Aaron Levine, a business law reform expert at the ADB's Private Sector Development Initiative, managed the implementation of the Solomon Islands online business register and says since Samoa introduced its one last year, there's been a significant increase in registrations there.

AARON LEVINE: The benefits have been unexpectedly amazing. The transparency that has come out of this online registry is incredible. We've seen, not just media, but we've seen other businesses, we've seen police, we've seen government, all sorts of groups of people are using this online register to get information that was once very difficult to obtain, for free whenever they want.

Aaron Levine says Vanuatu and Tonga will be next.

The President of the the Pacific Islands News Association, Moses Stevens, says there are many small media enterprises in the Pacific, and they too could do with the sort of microfinancing schemes the ADB is using.

MOSES STEVENS: I think in the media sector if media are going to be a significant partner in disseminating information and exposing the needs there then I think they should be empowered as well and they should make some funding available for them to start off businesses in the media industry.

Aaron Levine says the ADB, while financed in partnership with the Australian and New Zealand governments, doesn't finance organisations directly, but provides a helpful business environment.

AARON LEVINE: We reduce barriers to entry by making it faster to incorporate a business, we make it cheaper for them to do that, we create an environment that enables them to access finance more easily through a reform we call the secure transactions reform. So we undertake a variety of measures that help create that broad environment that encourages the private sector to grow.

Other initiatives raised at the summit included a move by media groups in Tonga to work together and pitch to advertisers as one group, to attract advertisers by offering a better reach to the public.