Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama met a delegation from the International Monetary Fund, providing brief with regards to the Fiji economy and current reform initiatives undertaken by the Government.
PM Commodore Bainimarama welcomed the delegation and acknowledged the Management of the IMF and the World Bank in sending a team in view of the importance of the IMF Article IV Mission.
“For Fiji, the 2009 Article IV Mission is important as in addition to the normal surveillance that is conducted every 2 years, this Mission will assist Fiji in the preparatory work on the Economic Reform Program that the Government has already planned for.”
PM Commodore Bainimarama said the global crisis and major flooding in January has significantly affected the Fiji economy in particular the tourism and sugar industries.
“The global crisis affected inward remittances in a big way. Remittances declined by over 40 percent. Some of our major exports are also adversely affected by the global crisis.
He adds all these factors led to the steep decline in foreign reserves and the global crisis led to Fiji’s currency appreciating against the NZ and Australia dollars, thus the need for 20 percent devaluation of the Fiji dollar in April.
“As a result, and coupled with additional SDR allocation by IMF, Fiji’s foreign reserves have recovered from a low of 1 month of imports to around 3.5 months. These developments allowed us to relax our credit ceiling by removing it from September.
PM Commodore Bainimarama said Fiji’s challenge is to lift its dismal growth rates of the past of below 2 per cent to 5 per cent in the next 3-5 years.
But he stressed Government needed to carry out reforms in a number of sectors to achieve higher sustainable growths.
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“Such macroeconomic reforms will help Fiji achieve long term sustainable development. These reforms have been delayed by successive Governments for too long and cannot be delayed any further.
Government has publicized major reforms in the following sectors including Land, Promoting Good Governance (Constitutional, Parliamentary reforms),Public Sector reforms (civil service, financial management, public enterprise),Labour Market, macroeconomy, real sectors like manufacturing, sugar, non-sugar agriculture, fisheries and forestry, private sector development and infrastructure.