FIJIKA NATURAL PRODUCTS

   

If you asked Jagdish Prasad 10 years ago if one day he saw himself as the manufacturer of products with medicinal and toiletry applications, the answer could very well have been, “no”.

 

Parmendra Sharma was working as a law clerk at a law firm in Suva in 2007 when after years of appeal from his kinsman to return to Barotu, Ra to open a shop, he relented.

“I was born and raised in Barotu and I’m a kai Ra,” he says in perfect Fijian.

“Every time I came back here for a visit to my sheep farm which I started five years ago, the villagers and chiefs around here kept asking me to open up a supermarket to help them out because the nearest place they could go for shopping was all the way to Vaileka which is 35 kilometres away.”

To help get him started, the Barotu landowners leased him land to set up his supermarket. Top Cat Supermarket is ideally situated at the corner of Barotu Circular Road and Kings Road which also serves as the express stop for the long haul bus services that traverse the Kings Road from Korovou in the east and Suva from the south.

Located further up Barotu Circular Road are more than 12 villages with a population of approximately 2,500 people with the furthest village, Rokovuaka, located 16 kilometres inland.

“After I secured a lease for 37 acres, I went to the Fiji Development Bank and they agreed to give me financing for $67,000 to build my supermarket and residence,” Ramendra said.

Top Cat was financed through the FDB’s Small Medium Enterprise loan facility, which is available to businesses that require less than $500,000 for the purposes of working capital, for establishing a business, farmhouse construction and eco-tourism ventures amongst others.

With the loan, Top Cat Supermarket opened its doors in July 2009 and two months into his operation, Ramendra says that he now holds about $27,000 worth of stock generating around $5,000 in sales each week.

 “It’s not an easy life – I open the supermarket at 6.30am and close at 10pm each day, seven days a week,” Ramendra said.

Aside from the Supermarket, Ramendra also has 286 head of sheep and plants sugar cane, root crops and assorted cash crops as well. Sheep farming pays well he says of his recent sale of a live ewe for $420.

In the next few months, Ramendra hopes to build a service station adjacent to his supermarket.

“There is a desperate need for a gas station here because the nearest one is located about 40 kilometres away and as you can see carrier and van operators use this junction as their main base to service the interior villages and having a service station here would help them with refueling,” he said. 
 

25 November 2009.

AGRI-FINANCING FOR BETTER LIVELIHOODS

Myhand Prasad, 54, is a contented man. Also known as Mahend, this Macuata farmer has managed to achieve with the aid of a tractor, a feat that would have taken him months if not years to achieve with the use of working bullocks.

In the 10 years that he has lived on his farm, Myhand only managed to clear and plant just over three acres of his 15 acre farm at Batiri, 18 kilometres from Seaqaqa.

“With the help of my two sons and a pair of working bullocks, I could only manage to clear and plant one acre of water melon, two acres of cassava and another quarter acre of assorted vegetables,” said the father of four adding, “it was very hard work with very little return from it.”

With limited income from his farming enterprise, Myhand worked in the logging and road construction industry to help supplement the family income. Then, things started to look up last year when the applied for and was given a grant of $6,250 from Government under the Northern Development Programme in August. Myhand was also directed to seek further assistance from the Fiji Development Bank for the additional financial resources he would need to upgrade his farm.

Through the Agri-Finance Scheme at FDB, Myhand was given another $8,000 which helped him purchase a tractor. The Scheme is available to farmers like Myhand to meet costs associate with developing their farms such as purchase of farming equipment and implements as well as planting material. Clients can borrow up to $10,000 under the Scheme for these purposes.

And as luck would have it, Myhand also landed a new cane contract with the Fiji Sugar Corporation to plant 10 acres of cane, which he has done; intercropped with water melons and long beans to help minimize the use of fertilizers and weeds. On four acres he has also planted rice, pineapples, ginger, yam, dalo, kumala, cassava, tomatoes and rice in the off-season.

Clearly, the purchase of the tractor has helped change the family fortunes. Myhand now has 14 of the 15 acres under farm.

“I’m hoping that with my first harvest of vegetables I’ll be able to get about $7,000 and maintain that income on a quarterly basis at least for now” he said.

With his first harvest of cane due in 2010, Myhand can expect to earn another $13,000 after expenses.

“I have a river that runs at the edge of my farm and I plan to irrigate my farm in the next phase of development,” he added.

Meanwhile, 20 kilometres away at Nanivuda, Seaqaqa, Aminio Peni, 36, another beneficiary of FDB’s Agri-Finance facility has also taken the road of hard work to developing the 63 acre farm, which he inherited from his father in 2005.

A former road construction worker, Peni received $3,500 from FDB in early December last year with which he purchased a pair of working bullocks, farming implements, fertilizers and planting material.

By the end of September 2009, he had in the ground seven acres of cassava, dalo, water melons and kumala on the largely talasiga land.

“Since I started farming, I have wanted to cultivate and utilize more land but I didn’t have the working capital I needed to do this,” Peni said of the FDB loan that has helped him improve on the four acres that was already planted and expand his farm by another three acres.

“Right now I’m waiting to do my first harvest either in November or December and from that I expect to earn about $3,000.”

Peni also has four pigs and 50 goats which help with maintaining income while he waits for this harvest to come in.

Meanwhile, FDB’s 2009 Small Business Awards competition is now open to anyone interested in entering. All businesses turning over less that $100,000 in gross sales are eligible to enter. Entry forms can be downloaded from www.fdb.com.fj; sponsor outlets, and all FDB branches and provincial council offices.
 

 

17 November 2009

ELENOA’S CANTEEN

Elenoa Vakaruruqali is a 46 year-old mother of eight children aged between six and 25 years old.

Living at Nakavika Village, seven kilometers from Seaqaqa, Elenoa decided one day that running a canteen in her village would be the ideal business because she already has an existing customer base of 79 households scattered over a one kilometer radius of her home with the nearest competitor three kilometers away.

Through Government’s Northern Development Programme, Elenoa managed to access $1,500 to start her dream with an additional $1,500 sourced from the Fiji Development Bank’s Micro-credit facility in March this year.

The FDB Micro-credit Scheme is open to individuals and farmers earning below $7,500 per annum and would like to borrow up to $5,000 for any financially viable project such as farming or retail.

With her husband, Iosefo Kulaniloga, 58, a retired police officer, Elenoa opens her doors for business at 6am every day including Sundays.

“Sometimes the customers wake us up before that,” she says with a laugh but she doesn’t let that annoy her because she knows that any sale she gets helps her maintain her large family.

“I close my canteen when I know that no more customers will come and that can be early in the evening or late at night.

“I make about $110 a week in sales and spend about half of that to restock my supplies but I make sure that I put away at least $10 every week towards my family’s savings and three dollars every day to pay off my loan at FDB.”

Elenoa and Iosefo supplement their meager income with a subsistence garden as well as yaqona and root crops.

With her customer base largely cane cutters, farmers, school students and fishermen, she ensures that she is always stocked with fast moving items like sugar, kerosene, rice, tuna and breakfast crackers. Elenoa’s canteen only has the most basic of items.

For small businesses like Elenoa’s surviving a culture of dinau or credit can be a death knell and how she manages this very difficult situation in her village is a lesson for other businesses like hers.

“I tell them that I am thinking of them when I give them dinau and I tell them that they have to pay by the end of that week or there will be no more dinau,” she says with a laugh.

“I think of them and they think of me so they make sure that they pay me by the end of the week.”

Elenoa’s plans for her fledgling business include a service counter from where she can serve her customers and to also increase her range of products. At present they enter into her home to buy the items.

Meanwhile, FDB’s 2009 Small Business Awards competition is now open to anyone interested in entering. All businesses turning over less that $100,000 in gross sales are eligible to enter. Entry forms can be downloaded from www.fdb.com.fj; sponsor outlets, and all FDB branches and provincial council offices.

 

10 November 2009.

DRESSING FOR SUCCESS

If you are the type of person who has a penchant for labels but not the budget to get them at retail prices then Deborah’s Second Hand Clothing store is where you need to go.

Deborah’s flagship store is located on the Main Street in Sigatoka with its second store on Rodwell Road in Suva.

Named after his daughter, Waisea Kurokuro, 46, is the man behind this fashionable dealership in second hand clothing, shoes and handbags.

“I used to work for Jack’s here in Sigatoka and when the 2000 coup happened, there was a slump in the tourism industry and I had to decide what I wanted to do very quickly,” says Waisea as he recalled how he started on the road to private enterprise.

“I spoke with my wife Margaret and it is with her support that I decided to try second hand clothing and thankfully a friend in Lautoka who also has a second hand shop sold me two bales of clothes which I used to start up Deborah’s.”

With the money made from the two bales of clothing, Waisea travelled to Sydney, Australia where he spent several weeks sourcing suppliers of quality second hand clothing.

“Every item that you will find in my stores, I have personally hand picked myself,” he says with smile.

“I can spend anywhere between four to six weeks going through the clothes to make sure that I bring back only quality second hand clothing, sometimes if I’m lucky I find clothes that still have the original sales tags on them.”

What works for Wise as he is fondly called by his friends, is that he knows his labels and his market. A quick browse through the neat racks and shelves, one sees labels such as Guess, Colorado, Jag, Adidas, Sandler, Diana Ferarri, Tony Bianco and Giselle to name but a few.

In 2005, Wise decided that the time was right to expand his business outside of Sigatoka so with a $3,000 loan from the Fiji Development Bank under the then Small Business Scheme, he opened his Suva store in early 2006, then one each in Tavua and Nadi in 2007.

“The Tavua shop I closed a few months later because with the closure of the mine, sales dropped and it was difficult to meet the rent,” Waisea said.

“The Nadi shop I also closed a few months later but that was because of thieves who broke in, stole the cash register and vandalized the store.”

Crushed that his hard work had to suffer such a thoughtless act of theft and vandalism, Wise decided to concentrate on his Sigatoka and Suva shops.

“When things get better I may go back to Nadi - I still have people in Nadi calling and asking me to re-open the store and I am still thinking about that,” Waisea said.

Waisea’s relationship with the FDB goes as far back to this youth when he left school to return to his village in Sigatoka Valley to help on the family farm where he took out his first loan to purchase two bullocks and plowing equipment.