NO DEPRESSION IN FIJI

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18025, 28 February 1933, Page 3

NO DEPRESSION IN FIJI

RECOVERY AFTER HURRICANES

A man who thought there was a depression in Fiji, but changed his mind when he reached Auckland, is visiting Christchurch at present. He is Mr. H. Stewart Forbes, who has been running a coconut plantation of 14C0 acres ou a remote island of the Fiji Group, and he told a Sun reporter that, compared with New Zealand, Fiji had very little to complain of at present. There was hardly any unemployment there. He thought that Fiji had been about the last place to feel the’depression, and that it would be the first to get out of it. A pleasing feature wfis ’that the tourist traffic was beginning to recover. Of course, the people had learned the necessity of thinking twice before spending money, but on the whole there was not much wrong with the islands now. As a matter of fact, lm said, what had harmed Fiji a good deal more than the depression were the hurricanes and Hoods experienced some time ago. However, a recovery had been effected and this year there were bumper crops of sugar and coconuts anil other island products. Copra made from coconuts, had slumped badly at one time, but was selling better now. Tine floods had done good in that they Had revived the soil. The trouble in the East was not worrying the islands at all, except that tlie Chinese were lxoycotting Japanese barbers and anything else Japanese.