Cost of living

 The Marquesas Islands are probably one of the places in the world where standard consumption goods are the most expensive. A pack of corn flakes will cost you 8€, a bottle of very bad wine, at least 10€, the most standard pack of biscuits, 3€; a saucepan is charged 45€ and even a can of basic pasta sauce is worth at least 5€. Don’t even mention clothing, electronic equipments or cars (count a minimum €10,000, and finding parts or a good mechanics is such a nightmare here that we’ve given up buying one). Overall, prices are around 20% higher than in Tahiti, where they are 50% higher than France.

Of course there are obvious reasons for that: the cost of shipping (it takes three weeks by boat to reach Tahiti from France, and another three days to Hiva Oa), the small size of the market (the total population of French Polynesia is 260,000, including 150,000 for Tahiti alone), the number of intermediaries (the shopkeepers in Atuona don’t place their orders directly with Kraft Foods, Danone or Procter & Gamble… They fly to Tahiti every month or so to buy their stuff from semi-whole sellers, who in turn import the goods from France, America or China).

Then come the taxes, and they are massive for the simple reason that there is no income tax in French Polynesia, so indirect taxes are the main source of revenue for the country. Even French products are considered as importations! A combination of VAT on imports, toll taxes and consumption taxes lead to a total amounting to 200% on certain products.

A third, and particularly perverse factor is the indexation of civil servants’ wages. This mechanism was created in 1966 to compensate French administration personnel who were affected in these remote islands, and results in the fact that a civil servant in French Polynesia is paid 1.84 times more than for the same position in France. No more than a few hundreds of people a year should have been affected by this scheme, however, following protests by Polynesian employees of the local administrations and public bodies brandishing the slogan “same job, same wage”, their salaries were increased to a similar, though slightly lower, level. The consequences on the local economy have been disastrous.

First of all, the already weak private sector struggles to keep up with such artificially inflated salaries, which reinforces its lack of appeal for local workers and inevitably restricts its growth potential. As a result, employees of the public sector in 2011 make up for 27% of the active population (40% in the Marquesas Islands!), a figure that has risen by 25% over the last decade. This situation has a definite impact on price levels: local demand, much more than tourism or any other industry, fuels the Tahitian economy, and the high level of revenue in the public sector has become the standard bearer for the big shopkeepers. A striking piece of evidence is the identity of the largest business in Tahiti: not Intercontinental, not Beachcomber, not a black pearl dealer but Carrefour, which operates two large franchised supermarkets where you can buy, imported weekly by plane: four “Perle de lait” yoghurts for 12€, fresh oysters from Brittany at the price of gold, organic salad from New Zealand, and all kinds of French cheeses. This is the glittering part of Tahiti, the island that prides itself with holding two world records: number of Porsche Cayenne and champagne consumption per capita.

As you would expect though, not everyone can afford such extortionate prices. Inequalities in French Polynesia are comparable to many developing countries in Africa or South America: the richest 20% grab 47% of the total household revenue, while the poorest 20% get only 6%. Unemployment is estimated around 25% (over 33% for the 18-25yo bracket), and there is no compensation scheme of any kind for the jobless. In Tahiti, a great part of the poorer population are “immigrants” from other islands who live in slums near Papeete and can’t even rely on home grown food or family solidarity. “Expensive life” is therefore a recurrent theme in the local political debate, and one of the first measures to be taken was to introduce fixed, subsidised prices for 40 “prime necessity products” – the list of which I find highly debatable: bread (only an awful white baguette - brown, healthier breads are not included), milk (did ancient Polynesian use to drink cow milk in the middle of the Pacific?), butter, sugar, flour, canned pâté, coffee, rice and, OK, white tuna. This system, in addition to proving extremely costly, has induced some particularly detrimental behaviours, with many poor families living exclusively on subsidised products and “coffee-bread-butter” becoming the daily supper for hundreds of children.

This phenomenon, combined with other factors such as genetics, lack of physical exercise and the five McDonald’s that sell cheap junk food around Tahiti (using criminal promotional measures such as “get 20% off a family meal past 3:30 pm”!) account for the disastrous state of public health in French Polynesia. 30% of the population is declared obese, a figure that has doubled over the last decade; over 32,000 people are treated for long illness, mostly heart diseases or severe diabetes; serious dental problems due to deficiencies are a plague. That is for the less heavenly side of these paradise islands.