The Minister for Agriculture, Rural and Maritime Development and National Disaster Management Inia Seruiratu says the Agriculture Marketing Authority (AMA) will not be closing down.

“Let me assure customers that the AMA is not closing down,” he said at the launch of the AMA website yesterday.

“It is here to stay and will continue to be supported by Government as part of Government’s commitment to provide markets to and to improve the livelihoods of rural communities through the use of their agricultural and fisheries resources.

“Businesses sell themselves short by not having a website.”

He said was this especially true for the Government company where rumours had been spread locally and overseas that the AMA was closing down.

Minister Seruiratu said websites provided businesses with market opportunities through the promotion of products and services .

They were utilised to accomplish different strategies to help businesses grow.

Further, he said, a company’s presence online allowed it to reaffirm its credibility to customers and provided customers the convenience of accessing information about businesses at their leisure.

“These are the beauties of having a website. It is the reason the AMA had made a decision to invest in this website as a tool to maximising business opportunities to support the aspirations of the company,” Minister Seruiratu said.

“I understand that the website, is at the brochure level at this stage, but I urge the AMA management to give thought to graduating this website to a level, sometime in the future, where customers will be able conduct business transactions, place orders and make payments online.”

This, he said, was the future of businesses.

The minister also announced another milestone development for the AMA.

As at May 10th the AMA had fully acquired the premises where it was yesterday from the Fiji Rice Limited, formerly known as the Rewa Rice Limited.

“In essence therefore, this facility is no longer the Rewa Rice’s, but AMA’s,” Minister Seruiratu said.

“This is a significant development, especially for a company that was on the verge of collapse only some years back due to bad management practices and operational inefficiencies.

“That is now a thing of the past.”

The plan to acquire this facility was a strategic decision made many years back, when he was a member of the AMA Board then became its executive chairman.

He paid tribute to the management that had come before him, but especially to those who took up the reigns after him, the late executive chairman Filipe Alifereti and the current management for not deviating from the efforts to secure the facility.

This is an important development with the facility location adding another business edge to the company.  Edited by Percy Kean

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