News Flash Sleepyheads!

Shoreline the company that owns the Tongan Electricity Supplier is a private company owned by the 'new' king. Tongas Electricity Supply used to be state owned till it was 'transferered' under a 20-year lease to the new kings company when the country was ruled by his dad (cheers pops').

But Shoreline recently enetered into an agreement to sell off the electrical supply authority to a NZ company, Northpower. (google "shoreline" and "northpower" for the links).

The deal was reported in the NZ papers a couple of months ago. The price paid to shoreline for the Tongan generator was somewhere in the order of $NZ46 million (NZ Herald).

When you pay this sort of moola for such a 'run down asset', you will of course be wanting a nice healthy return on your investment; Increases in the price of electricity have altready been forecast, and Northpower/Shoreline and the Tongan government are sorting out a few other regulatory issues before the sale is closed...

I wonder if the NZ company will get a better deal, now that NZ toops are over there 'helping out' the king and his government with their troubles.

The privatisation of other royal assets has also been foreshadowed by the new king. Apparently it is considered 'bad form' for the monarch to impugn his 'impartiality' by owning large chunks of the Tongan economy.
Now that he's running the country he has decided to liquefy a few of the assets that he came into when his old man was the boss.

Clearly it is not considered 'bad form' to accept large amounts of money for those assets.

No doubt we will soon be hearing of other NZ companies (ignoring the NZ governemnts travel warnings) and rushing in to make some bargain-basement deals at the Tongan peoples expense.

And no doubt also, if any of those Tongan democratic rights 'insurgents' (quoting a NZ troop spokesperson), make any noise about it, there will be plenty of assistance from the NZ government and their military to help them see the error of their ways.

IWD

jklo;p0-[''

Does anyone have any info on where the pressure to privatise state assets is coming from? I am trying to confirm that the Democracy movement has promoted asset sales as one of its policy positions. The experience of most of Sth America and Aotearoa has shown this to be economic suicide openning up the economy to local elites and foreign control. The tongan economy is so tiny with a almost total collapse of the agricultural export and tourism sectors that the only income will be foreign aid and remittances. If foreign investors take significant control of the few comercial assets then their profits will be paid for out of aid money and private donations. What a wonderful economic modl that will be.