The Fiji Chamber of Commerce and Industry wants district chambers to be more involved in its operations.

They hope to do this by re-designing its constitution – otherwise known as articles of association (AoA), the chamber’s president Peter Mazey says.

“I think we have to be diverse and interestingly, while our executives are mostly based in Suva, they have Fiji-wide companies and businesses,” Mr Mazey said.

“We agreed to have a special general meeting in three months time and prior to that we will look at re-doing the articles to make them more inclusive of the district chambers.”

Three new executive directors were elected during the chamber’s annual general meeting in Suva on Friday.

They include De Vos on the Park chief executive officer Annemarie De Vos, Fijian Holdings Group Limited CEO Nouzab Fareed and Suva lawyer Ana Tuiketei.

“When you get somebody on board like Fijian Holdings’ CEO Mr Fareed, for example, his is very much a national company. So diversity I think is important,” Mr Mazey said.

The chamber’s primary role is to provide a forum for Fijian businesses to discuss major trends in the Fijian economy.

It also serves as the independent bridge between Government and the private sector.

Efforts to make the body more diverse by facilitating the greater inclusion of district chambers have been ongoing.

In last year’s AGM, a motion was passed to increase the number of vice presidents from three to four, where each was tasked with representing a division.

The chamber, under Mr Mazey’s presidency, has undertaken a number of networking initiatives aimed at streamlining international trade and creating more commercial opportunities for its members.

Collaborating with the Ministry of Trade, it has signed a number of Memorandum of Understandings with counterpart bodies in several Pacific Island Countries.

Mr Mazey says these networks are being pursued in the face of rising protectionist trade measures being imposed by countries across the globe.

“It’s something that I’ve very much supported and am personally proud of,” Mr Mazey said.

“A lot of them (MoUs) are through the Ministry of Trade; they give us the heads up and we start working on it together to see what the advantages are for trade for all our members.

“The point of all this is that we have to work together to get the best benefits because we found that there are trade tariffs in place in some of our Pacific Islands.

“Working together, we’re able to get that looked at by the country’s concerned so that we can make it beneficial for all members and the MoUs help us with that.”

Mr Mazey said these efforts were in line with Fiji’s ambition to be the hub of the Pacific and hopes that it can continue to expand.

“I think it was a very good meeting. It was outside of the normal because people had questions and they brought up issues and they were addressed hopefully to the benefit of everybody,” he said.

Feedback:  sheldon.chanel@fijisun.com.fj