Tripura Sundari - Shiva

Time News in 2011

Recent news related to time, time zone and daylight saving time




Samoa to change its time zone

The South Pacific island nation Samoa has decided to jump forward in time by one day to ease its connections with its main trading partners.


Published: 10th May 2011, 11:37 GMT


Surf at Salani, Samoa.

Currently New Zealand and Australia are important business partners for Samoa but the time difference makes it a challenge. Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said: "In doing business with New Zealand and Australia, we're losing out on two working days a week."


"While it's Friday here, it's Saturday in New Zealand and when we're at church on Sunday, they're already conducting business in Sydney and Brisbane."


At the moment the time difference between Samoa's capital Apia and Sydney is 21 hours and the difference between Apia and Wellington is 23 hours. After 29th December the time difference will be one hour ahead of Wellington and three ahead of Sydney.


The change has come after 119 years since Samoa last time altered its time zone. At that time the transfer was to the east side of the international date line in an effort to aid the trade with the US and Europe.


"Our trading partners have dramatically changed since and today we do a lot more business with New Zealand, Australia, China and with the Pacific Rim countries such as Singapore," told the prime minister.


Samoa is located in South Pacific Ocean approximately halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii and has a population of 179,000 people. It became independent from New Zealand in 1962.