The island states of the Pacific face many development challenges, including finding economic niches, in which they can compete given the small size of the local economy, the often low level of natural and human resources and the high costs of shipping. Business and employment creation is critical to local development, yet entrepreneurial skills are weak.

As Regional Private Sector Adviser (Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation-funded) to the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) comprising of fourteen Forum Island Countries (FICs), the scope of services included the provision of policy, program and project level advice/support to PIFS, FICs, and key regional inter-governmental agencies to strengthen the private sector

Services provided by QLBS:

• Built a network of Business Development Managers that have the knowledge and tools to help local business communities.
• Provided an SME toolkit and train participants in their use.
• Built a database of businesses, so that relative capability profiles can be developed and programs of improvement recommended.
• Designed and ran business capability workshops.
• Trained the economic development agency workers in using it, linked it to the World Bank SME Toolkit, so if the diagnosis shows you need a business plan, the Bank guidelines are provided in real time.
• Feed the information into the database and analysis engine and analyse the business assessment data to create profiles of the Business Capability of each country
• Identify gaps in the overall economic environment and worked with the economic development agencies of the various island states to produce action plans to address them.
• Benchmarking the business communities of New Zealand with the Island Communities.

“The content of these workshop is focused on the QLBS.com business capability tool. The Secretariat adopted the programme to undertake capability assessments, identify and address weaknesses and pursue continuous improvement in Pacific Island business in its quest to build a high quality, internationally recognised industry. The outcome, coupled with the ability to produce comparative and benchmarking measures in an objective and transparent manner, have resulted in a world class workshop programme. Fine tuning to suit the characteristics of the local industries has proven possible without affecting the integrity of the data or its ability to produce comparative and benchmarking data both longitudinally and trans-nationally - something the Scretariat hopes to share with other countries in the future.

The work with QLBS.com was in collaboration with the Graduate School of Business of the University of the South Pacific as they also saw great value in the business tools as means of developing the business community in the Pacific region” 

- Alise Faulalo-Stunnenburg, Economic Governance Programme, Pacific Islands Forum