Kirisitiana Uluwai 
Standardizing a Pacific currency will be a difficult task to achieve.
Pacific Islands Forum Chair Mark Brown says this is because most currencies need the backing of the US dollar, and given the magnitude of most Pacific economies, this will be impossible to achieve.
An academic at the University of the South Pacific raised this idea at a public seminar early this month, citing the European Union as an example.
“To look at standardizing a currency across the Pacific is going to be very difficult because of the disparities in all our economies. Both in size but also the way that we generate our income.”
Brown says Pacific economies income generation means differ.
He says some economies are based on tourism-based industries, some are fisheries-based, some are extraction-based, and some are commodities-based economies.
“It’s already hard enough to try and get an airline to fly to all our Pacific islands, to try and get a standard currency across all, I think it will be a reach too far.”
Discussions of a standardized Pacific currency emerged as a follow-up idea to a visa-free Pacific.
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