French Polynesia's economic growth pinned on $2bn resort

Transcript

French Polynesia's tourism minister says news that a US$2 billion tourism project on Tahiti will go ahead is significant for the territory's economy.

The government last weekend announced that an agreement had been signed with a Chinese consortium to construct the massive Mahana Beach hotel project.

The minister, Jean-Christophe Bouissou, says told Jamie Tahana the project is the largest tourism development in all of France, and will create thousands of jobs for the territory.

Photo: Presidence Polynesie francaise

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOUISSOU: It's a tourist complex with hotels, malls, restaurants, a place for having meetings. So we are very glad today to be able to have this project running and hopefully having these new hotels, new rooms in the next five years.

JAMIE TAHANA: It's signed now, but there have been plenty of complications with getting this done. It was originally going to be done with a Hawaiian company and that didn't work out. Has any kind of concession had to be made?

J-CB: Well one year ago the government of that time, that was the government of [President] Gaston Flosse, has chosen an architect from Hawaii, but the project had no funding and no investors. So we had to start to make a new contest and search for some investors that we'll allow to build this new complex. We've chosen RNF from Guangzhou [China], this is the group that we've chosen because of their capacity of financing the project and also for all their references they have from running hotels around the world.

JT: So what are the terms of this deal? It's a 70-year lease and they have to employ locals, don't they?

J-CB: Yeah, that's one big point of the MOU is, first of all, to hire people from French Polynesia building this complex, building the hotels but also running these hotels, the restaurants and all the other part of the programme. Of course, we know that they probably will have to also hire people from outside, maybe from China, to make it faster to build these hotels.

JT: So the actual agreement will be signed early next year, but there have been a few legal issues that president [Edouard] Fritch has highlighted over the past couple of years. Have all of these been resolved?

J-CB: Yes, we have been discussing with these investors for one year now and we've talked about all the issues about the property, the land, what they need to build the marina, about the kind of hotels -- how they can run. So all these issues have been taken care of.

JT: This government has over the past few years said this project will significantly increase tourism numbers to French Polynesia - numbers which have been reducing over the past few years. What kind of impact will this have on the territory's economy?

J-CB: What will happen is that we are doubling the number of hotel keys here in French Polynesia and what we know, also, is that investors are already asking for us to allow them to build other hotels elsewhere in Tahiti and also in the islands like Bora Bora or Moorea. So what we can say is that we are going to open new markets like the Chinese market through the Tahiti Mahana Beach [we're also] going to be able to hire 5,000 people working in the hotels and 10,000 people working making whatever is needed for the tourists in this complex. 

Signing of deal to build Mahana Beach resort complex in Tahiti Photo: supplied