Newly appointed Pacific Islands Forum secretary general Tuiloma Neroni Slade said on Sunday that the Secretariat will closely monitor the global financial crisis affecting the United States and its implication for the Pacific region, according to news reports reached here Monday.
Slade said member countries of the Forum were not immune to the global crisis, reported Xinhua.
"We do not fully understand the implication or likely impacts for our member states. Clearly, because of the financial arrangement of the diverse membership of the Forum, it's difficult to give a one response or anticipation that would relate to the circumstances of our entire 16 member states," the Pacnews quoted him as saying in Fiji.
"Nonetheless it's a global phenomenon that is not only of serious concern to the largest financial economic powerful countries. It is without question likely to have a fairly serious impact for many other economies," Slade said.
Financial experts at the Forum Secretariat were monitoring the situation to gauge the true extent of its impacts to small islands economies in the Pacific, he added.
"This is what the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are already undertaking. We need some diagnostic approach, we need to assess the impacts of the global level and the secretariat is now beginning to do this," the secretary general said.
The global financial crisis will have an impact on Pacific tourism, Slade added.
According to Slade, the current economic recession will most surely affect fuel prices and inherently have an impact on tourism.