The Fiji Development Bank has labeled as debatable a report authored by Professor Wadan Narsey commenting on the state of poverty in the country.
The Preliminary Report on Poverty and Income Distribution highlighted that poverty had increased in rural areas and stressed the need to allocate about 70 percent of resources towards rural development.
However, a statement from FDB said the use of income as a primary indicator of poverty raised debatable issues.
“One point in particular that could change the result findings was the use of income as the primary indicator of poverty,” the statement said.
“Income in this report was assumed to be the return on labor in urban sectors, sale of goods and services; remittance from abroad and domestic transfer of funds (gifts, donation, social obligation etc).
“The difficulty with this measure is that it assumes rural and urban sectors have the same ability to generate income.
“Secondly, money or cash economy is presumed to be at the same level Fiji wide.
“For those who have lived in Fijian villages and islands can testify that people have survived, build homes and even send children to school without any real source of income or money in their pockets.
“Families are more or less self sufficient by eating from their gardens and fish from the sea/creeks.
“These people are relatively rich and healthy but cash poor. So the report is more or less talking about the availability of money in the hands of people.
“It cannot really brush Fiji being poor based on cash deprivation.”