Gov’t collects $400k from foreign investors in West

A Foreign Investment Division-led joint agency operation, Business Monitoring Joint Agencies Committee (BMJAC) aimed to carry out compliances and enforcement in various sectors in the Solomon Islands has completed recently has resulted in the collection of $400,000 from foreign operated businesses in the Western Province.

As part of the implementation of the Government’s Economic Stimulus Package (ESP), twenty youths were engaged to do a nationwide inspection from September to November in order to collect firsthand information on various companies’ operation.

This exercise and auditing is the first of its kind after 25 years.

A Government statement confirms that a total of 450 Foreign Investments were inspected during the operations.

In Western Province, a total of 35 existing companies will receive notices on non- compliances. Show cause and stop notices were served to ten wholesale and retail shops in Munda and Noro and penalties of $100,000.00 were imposed according to the FI Act for non-compliances and breach of their conditions of approval.

In response to the show-cause, investors submitted their representations and have met half of the penalties to SIG.

The statement also confirms that a total of eight foreign investors in Munda and Noro paid half of the penalty each and were scheduled to pay the remaining within a month time.

In response to the inspections, the Government collected a total of $400,000.00.

All other sectors will be subjected to this process in the remaining days of 2020 and continue in 2021.