Editorial: ‘Economic Recovery Is No Easy Ride’
The Permanent Secretary for Finance Shiri Gounder, during the National Economic Summit in Suva last week, warned that Fiji would go through a difficult period in its economic recovery.
Wednesday 24 April 2024 | 22:00
Participants of Day 2 of the 2023 National Economic Summit at the Grand Pacific Hotel on April 21, 2023. Photo: Leon Lord
The Permanent Secretary for Finance Shiri Gounder, during the National Economic Summit in Suva last week, warned that Fiji would go through a difficult period in its economic recovery.
Coupled with the spending of the past and the current global economic recession, the summit was to pitch ideas of resurrecting Fiji from its economic low which the World Bank reported last week had a debt level of 90 percent.
The projection from the like-minded presentations of experts during the $360,000 two-day summit will soon plot the chart for Fiji’s path to economic recovery.
The public will have to live with the outcome of decisions reached by our leaders.
People want to know if the cost of living will increase.
This is important to them.
They will compare the cost of living to what they have in their pockets.
The take-home pay packs in the past few years had not increased in size.
With the summit gone and talks circulating for an increase in the cost of basic items such as food, leaders should always keep the people in mind.
Increasing cost of basic items and tax compared to what they can now afford can lead to more difficulties, especially poverty.
The summit heard the need for growth in real incomes, review of the minimum wage, review of the cost of living and the welfare of Fiji’s working poor and price regulation of items.
Fijians dread an increase in Value-Added Tax (VAT), a tax levied on the supply of goods and services in Fiji. VAT is charged at zero per cent, nine (9) and 15 per cents for a range of goods and services supplied.
Items such as baby milk, canned fish, cooking gas in cylinders, cooking oil, Dhal and split peas, flour, kerosene, potatoes, rice, etc, are basic items with zero percent tax.
These are needed to survive at home, especially for ordinary Fijians and those living in rural areas.
Increasing their costs will not go down well with the people, especially in a country with 75 per cent of people living in poverty are iTaukei.
Former prime minister, former Minister for Finance and Fiji Labour party leader Mahendra Chaudhry after the summit said; The crazy and irresponsible recommendations at the economic summit will send thousands of Fijians into extreme poverty and must be rejected.”
While it might be his political punch against the rulers of the day, our leaders should take it as a constructive criticism and consider inputs from the general public if all Fijians are to successfully sail through the economic storm raging across the country.
Especially, when the Minister for Finance Professor Biman Prasad in summing up the summit said Government noted the urgent demands for solutions to our daily challenges and the need for sustainable solutions to economic growth.
“We have to rebuild institutional integrity and reset the moral compass of governance, … of new economic direction where we can ultimately achieve fiscal consolidation.”
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