IFC Childcare Study For Fiji To Improve Working Mothers Participation

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is currently working on childcare study for Fiji.

In an interview with SunBiz, Vivek Pathak, IFC’s Director for East Asia and the Pacific highlighted that a key barrier to female la­bor force participation is the lack of access to childcare.

“We did the diagnostics on the issues that women face in terms of progressing in their careers and we found that childcare was a ma­jor concern,” Mr Pathak said.

“As you know the mother will usually bear responsibility for looking after their child full time or take a part time job.

“Advising on childcare is a global service we offer, and we are working on it here in Fiji. We have now done a study with seven Fijian busi­nesses to assess childcare issues.

“With IFC’s support, these companies are now exploring options for supporting the childcare needs of their staff.

Public sector

“This same study is currently being complet­ed across all Fijian Government Ministries. As the largest employer in Fiji, investing in quality childcare services is not only good eco­nomic and social policy, but will also help im­prove the productivity and commitment of public sector employees.

Corporate sector

“Another major barrier to women’s full par­ticipation in paid employment is gender-based violence issues, that’s an issue we deal with in terms of the corporate sector.

“We are currently working with three Fijian businesses to assess the impact gender- based violence has on business in Fiji.

“We will use the results from that study to raise awareness among the business commu­nity of the human and financial toll gender- based violence places on their staff and their business, and to develop solutions fit for Fijian businesses.

“I think it’s important for people to know why IFC is working on these issues.

“There is strong empirical evidence from both developed and developing countries which shows that companies with more gen­der diversity at all levels operate better, have higher return on investment, and attract the best talent.

“So, with that in mind, how do we make it happen? Companies should understand that this is an investment that is going to improve productivity, efficiency and ultimately, it is just good business se

He also noted that the report on the Business Case for Employer Supported Childcare will be re­leased soon.

IFC’s work in Fiji is undertaken with the support of the Australian Government under the Australia-Fiji Partnership.

Mr Pathak was in Fiji for the of­ficial opening of the World Bank Group’s new office in Suva on Monday and also had meetings with Government Ministers and officials, private sector and non-government organisations.

The new office which will serve as a regional hub for the develop­ment institution’s work across the region.

The new regional hub will be in­tegral to the World Bank Group’s delivery of more than $1billion worth of projects across six coun­tries (Fiji, Nauru, Kiribati, Samoa, Tonga and Tuvalu) in a wide range of sectors including transport, avi­ation, information and communi­cations technology, education, dis­aster resilience, fisheries, health and education, among others.

Below are excerpts of an inter­view with Mr Pathak about his re­cent trip to Fiji:

Interview with Vivek Pathak, IFC’s Director for East Asia and the Pacific.

1.Can you give us an overview of your meetings in Suva?

So, the last two days we’ve had a number of meetings with the pri­vate sector, the financial sector, civil society, the Government and of course our colleagues with the World Bank Group.

I think it’s important to under­stand the context of what IFC is trying to do in Fiji.

As you’ll know we have just opened our World Bank Group office here and the reason we’ve opened an office is we see opportu­nities within Fiji and also broadly across the South Pacific.

Now when you look at the private sector in Fiji, it’s a sophisticated and well-rounded private sector that understands business.

Fiji also has a robust financial sector, and there are a number of things we do in countries in terms of financing the private sector, and local or international banks.

Therefore, what is it we want to do in Fiji?

Fiji in many ways has become an important country for us in terms of trying different things. Fortunately, we have a government that’s an excellent partner who are willing to work with us especially on more innovative approaches that we’re looking at in health care and affordable housing.

These kinds of innovative ap­proaches have not been tried in Fiji, or in the rest of the Pacific.So we’re hoping to unlock new op­portunities for the private sector to invest in the country.

Fiji then can also serve as a model to other countries in the Pacific.

Another area that we’re very keen to focus on is technology. I’m a great believer in technology - the power of technology and the inter­net.

What technology has done in many ways is eliminate the middle man therefore making the entire value chain not only cheaper for the final consumer but also a lot more efficient.

So, whether it’s things such as ecommerce or financial services we think technology can play a major role.

And in Fiji the great news is the benefit of smartphones is very high.

I was told that the number of sim cards exceeds the entire popula­tion in the country which is great. It’s also very affordable.

If the cost was too high, people would not use it, so it’s not a lux­ury item.

So, what we’re trying to do now is work with the private sector and the government and look at how do we leverage the investments that have already been made in the whole technology space. We think we can bring down the cost of de­livery.

There are things we have devel­oped in other countries, for exam­ple working with farmers and with companies, in areas such as health or education.

There are several distance learn­ing programmes.

So there are a number of oppor­tunities which over the next few years we hope that we can open up using technology.

Given that Fiji does have a num­ber of islands, with some remote villages were access is not so easy, it’s good to look at the potential in the future. The physical proximity that has been essential in the past, is not going to be necessary in the future. Just look at financial ser­vices. If you were to give access to finance to every person in a coun­try, in previous times you would have needed to have a branch in every neighborhood.

But with technology and the in­ternet all you need is a phone and connectivity.

• If you could highlight some of the things that you’ve talked about with Government, NGOs and the private sector?

All three of these groups shared with us concerns which are all very different. I’ll start with the NGO community.

Obviously, their big concern is that their voice should be heard, that we should be engaging with them which is exactly why I’ve met them.

It is about understanding their point of view, and also what can we do to make sure when we have an intervention that it’s a sustainable intervention.

We also want to consider how to reach the micro, small and medi­um sized enterprises.

There are a lot of smaller SME’s which are not banked so one of the issues is what role can IFC play to get those people into the bank or make their businesses more bank­able.

We had a good meeting, which discussed a range of issues. And we see it as important to engage with NGOs.

We firmly believe that the private sector will change - not because we tell them to - but the change will come when they are convinced that it is good for their long term for the business.

It doesn’t mean you’ll get your returns today or tomorrow. But in the medium run, if you do certain things you can run a sustainable business.

There is enough evidence around to support that claim.

So it’s really about forming I would say a coalition with our­selves, civil society, and the private sector and moving one step at a time.

I caution everyone this will not happen overnight.

This is a journey and we all need to be in it together.

The private sector’s concerns are in a few areas.

One was about improving the business environment and we are working with the government on that front.

The conversation with the private sector was more focused on the opportunities that this country of­fers.

To us the opportunities are in ar­eas like housing, tourism and agri­culture.

There may also be an opportu­nity for more business process out­sourcing services in Fiji.

Tourism is also a big employment generator. They say for every di­rect job you create in a hotel, there are seven to eight indirect jobs cre­ated. We’re working with the ho­tels on that. We’re also looking at how to ensure that more domestic produce is used, rather than hav­ing to import produce.

When you look at tourism and in­frastructure is important.

It’s also about connectivity, and making it affordable, and mak­ing sure the people have the right skills to work in the sector.

So, this would be the three broad areas which was similar to what we discussed with the government.

We didn’t talk specifically about the Doing Business rankings, but we do have a team that’s engaging with the Government and working hard to get those rankings up.

3.What do you see as e challenges in Fiji?

One is natural disasters, which are not under anyone’s control. Re­cently there was talk about liquid­ity issues.

Again, we as an organisation can­not do much about that.

Third, and this is not really a challenge, but it is about how can we collectively publicise what the country is doing well and what are the opportunities.

How do we get word out there in a systematic manner which shows there is an opportunity here and makes more people come to Fiji. There are other areas in which we engage with the government, but it’s really about how do we get our level of engagement to the next level and discuss it with the gov­ernment.

4.Can you give us an update on the Public Private Partnership (PPP) and Green Bonds for our readers?

So the Green Bond, as we all know, is a great success and we’re very grateful to the government for giving us this opportunity.

• IFC led World Bank Group sup­port for Fiji to become the first emerging market to issue a sover­eign green bond. The proceeds of that FJ$100 million green bond are expected to directly benefit about 130,000 Fijians; see more than 1,200 school buildings rebuilt, over 2,000 trees planted; more than 170 bridg­es rehabilitated as well as deliver clean water and safely managed water to over 42,000 people and more than 2,500 cyclone-resilient solar home systems installed across Fiji.
• Fiji also gained international recognition for its green bond, which debuted on the London Stock Exchange – showing that island nations can find innovative ways to create funding for climate action.

The public-private partnership, PPP, space offers a lot of opportu­nities and we’re looking to explore them.

There could be PPP’s in other ar­eas such as the power sector or in­frastructure.

We always look at these public-private partnerships from the lens of being a public good. I would say that we should stop calling it PPP and add a fourth P – with that P standing for the word public.

So you have public - private part­nerships for the public.

And I think that is important because if you build something that’s not affordable whether it is in healthcare or education, logis­tics or power, if it’s not affordable for the public, then it really doesn’t serve a purpose.

One thing I want to stress is that ultimately public private partner­ships are for the public and that is very important to us to ensure whatever we finance is affordable to the public.

In the case of our work in health­care, it means that the hospitals – Lautoka and Ba – remain as public hospitals and are still assets owned by the government.

5.Could you give us an update on the Pacific corporate government institute?

The corporate government insti­tute is another initiative that we have started in Fiji.

It’s named the Pacific Corporate Governance Institute is we want to make it a regional body.

We are going to organise our first ever summit of this corporate gov­ernment on April 4.

For the PCGI summit, we expect­ing a number of people.

Aside from the summit, there will be training programmes. Usually, we have about 30 or 40 people for those sessions.

We have trained and had aware­ness programs for about 300 peo­ple in our programmes in the last year on corporate governance and about 100 of them were women.

We would like the PCGI to become a sustainable model which can op­erate in Fiji and also line in with other countries in the Pacific re­gion, like Papua New Guinea.

Feedback: maraia.vula@fijisun.com.fj