Prime Minister, Voreqe Bainimarama has announced a bonus payout of $7 million dollars at Tropik Woods Industries Limited which is another record payment to the landowners.
Bainimarama says this is quite a long way from that first $350,000 payment made back in 2013.
He says today marks Fiji Pine’s biggest victory yet and for landowners, that victory is more than anything, as they are walking away with a bonus payment that at one time in history would have seemed like a complete fantasy.
Bainimarama also announced the complete repayment of Fiji Pine’s remaining loans to Westpac with a final lump sum payment of 4.4 million dollars.
The Prime Minister says they brought in the right people with the right skills to put the industry on the path of prosperity, and with that team in place, they have been putting marks on the board year in and year out.
Bainimarama stresses that not one inch of iTaukei land has been lost under his government.
He says after seven years of hearing lies, it can be said that enough is enough because those in the Opposition were not only wrong, worse than that, they actually tried to stop people from seeing the great benefits of sharing in the pine industry’s tremendous success.
He says that he was shocked to hear that a past Prime Minister of Fiji was reckless enough to talk about taking Fiji back in time to the 1990s, taking us back under an old and weak Constitution, taking us back to some of the darkest years in our history, and undoing all the progress made, not only for the pine industry, but for all of Fiji.
He says during Sitiveni Rabuka’s term as Prime Minister, Fiji lost the National Bank of Fiji, the only national bank of the country, the debts of which we are still paying off today, creating inter‑generational debt.
He says certainly the pine industry cannot afford to be taken back in time which is back to the verge of bankruptcy, with no vision, no payments and no security for landowners.
