Pacific Trade Deal

Economist sees merit in Pacific trade deal

Papua New Guinea and Fij have refused to join the Australia and New Zealand-led agreement, which has been signed by most other Pacific nations.

Wadan Narsey, a Fijian economist at Australia's Swinburne University, said the absence of Fiji and PNG was a setback but he said there were still advantages.

He said the first of these was that something was better than nothing.

Call for more time to assess Pacific trade deal

The full text of the proposed deal has been made available online only a few weeks out from the planned signing ceremony to be held in Tonga on the 14th of this month.

A trade justice campaigner for the Pacific Network on Globalisation, Adam Wolfenden, said there was simply not enough time for an independent assessment of the proposed agreement.

Mr Wolfenden said the extremely complex legal document would have a massive impact on a cross section of society in the Pacific.