DEPUTY PM AND MINISTER FOR FINANCE HON. BIMAN PRASAD'S SPEECH AT THE MULTI-STAKEHOLDER DIALOGUE ON THE FIJI ECONOMY: BUILDING SUSTAINABLE PROSPERITY TOGETHER - DIALOGUE FIJI

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

I am very delighted to join you all today to officiate this ‘Multistakeholder Dialogue on Fiji’s Economy. I take this opportunity to thank the Director of Dialogue Fiji, Mr. Nilesh Lal, and those that supported in organizing this event and bringing everybody together.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Coalition Government firmly believes in an open and inclusive public dialogue process with more collaboration and participation in public policy making. Our ideology is clear. Government alone cannot and should not do everything, including public policy making.

We believe in participatory governance, where our citizens, are part of the governance and decision-making process. We want to get diverse views from different stakeholders. We want to bring together the intellectual power we have in the country to think about our challenges and develop solutions together. Everyone has some ideas to contribute and once we bring together our people and deliberate on issues, we come up with solutions that we can own and this is a critical piece in the nation building process. This opportunity to express different views is critical in the functioning of any democracy.

And in the process, ladies and gentlemen, we are ready as a Government to take criticisms, we are ready to admit that we in government don’t always know everything and we shouldn’t pretend that we do, we should be ready to accept mistakes, learn from the mistakes and take corrective actions. This openness is also important to keep Government accountable and provide the much-needed framework of checks and balances that should keep any Government in check.
From day one in office, the coalition Government have been working hard to reestablish the machinery to support open dialogue which was destroyed by the previous Government. We are trying again to bring people together, whether it is the private sector, trade unions, academia, civil society organizations, women’s groups, youth organisations, development partners or the general public. 

It is critical that we move away from the dictatorial ‘business as usual’ approach to economic policy making we saw in the last 16 years. The old philosophy of one or two man know it all is very dangerous as we see from the state of affairs in our country.

Our democratic institutions have been broken. The economy has been brought to its knees. Our socio-economic situation have deteriorated. Our public finances are in dire straits with a bloated debt situation. All because, the previous Government was not listening and were too arrogant in their style of governance. We are here to change that. We are hear to listen and work together to deal with our challenges.

Ladies and Gentlemen, in the recent past, our economy has been severely impacted from the chronic economic mismanagement and the devastating blow from the COVID-19 crisis. We continue to reel from the impacts of multiple challenges facing us on the international front, including the weak global growth outlook, geopolitical tensions and fragmentation, high global inflation and tightening of monetary policy conditions in major advanced economies, including our neighbors Australia and New Zealand.

Domestically, we have a lot to do. We need to fix our economy. we need to create more jobs. We have a large public debt to deal with. We need to rebuild our fiscal buffers. We need to save our infrastructure which is suffering from years of neglect, including the need to build new infrastructure. We need to improve our health system and medical service delivery. We need to fix our water woes. We need to provide better education for our children and ensure that those disadvantaged and vulnerable are protected. But all this will take time. It will need resources and improvements in public sector delivery capabilities. But it is only together that we can do this and address the mammoth challenges at hand.

It is not going to be an easy ride. But we have started the process. We had a successful National Economic Summit where key stakeholders deliberated to chart a framework for economic governance and set our national priorities captured in the communique and the resolutions of the Summit. We have appointed an independent fiscal review Committee, which has delivered a compressive report on the fiscal priorities not only for now but for the medium term. We had removed the draconian Media Act to bring back media freedom so our press can report fairly and do so without fear. We are now in the final stages of finalizing our national budget for the upcoming fiscal year which will be announced on June 30 at 10am. We are thinking about a new National Development Plan and work will continue early next year.

Ladies and gentlemen, not everything is bad. There is a lot of optimism and confidence in the country. Our economy is recovering fast and is projected to grow by around 8 percent this year with a strong rebound in tourism which will return to pre pandemic levels this year. Investment levels are picking up with a pipeline of major projects that are getting off the ground. Our foreign exchange levels remain strong. Our financial sector is sound. Liquidity levels are more than adequate to support investments. Remittances have crossed the billion-dollar mark last year and is increasing further. On the fiscal front, our revenue levels are stabilizing quickly, and debt levels are being put on a sustainable path. We need to build on this momentum, and we are confident that we should soon get things under control.  

There are also risks and challenges. We have a major challenge with skill loss due to migration and underinvestment in our people over the years. We remain vulnerable to natural disasters and climatic events and as our recent history has shown the impact of these natural disasters can be catastrophic on the economy, infrastructure, and socio-economic conditions. The global economy is slowing down with recent slowdown in Australia and New Zealand that will affect us. We will need to take some tough decisions in the upcoming budget, but we just don’t have many options. But that’s how the world works. There will always be challenges and we need to manage it.

We have some medium to long term challenges. We need to diversify our economy. We need to shift away from the public sector led growth and development model to one which is led by the private sector. We need to raise productivity levels. We need to become more competitive and innovative as a country. We need to not only build infrastructure but make it more resilient. We need to empower our youths and women, quickly progressing away from women and youth development to women and youth led development.

Public service delivery must be strengthened. Ladies and gentlemen, we need to think collectively and critically in order to implement the best policy measures for health, education, upgrading and upskilling of labour force, creating conducive employment environment and opportunities and adequately resourcing our key priority sectors. We need to sustainably increase domestic exports and entice new foreign direct investment to improve our competitiveness and long-term economic growth prospects.

We are working on our next budget- we have confidence that it will be budget that will lay the foundation for a new style of inclusive governance, inclusive economic and social policies and fiscally responsible economy.

I must thank Dialogue Fiji for organizing this forum since consultation and collaboration is the way forward for Fiji. Under this new leadership, our mission is to build unity and social cohesion and further improve and strengthen our economy through sustainable growth with the ultimate objective of improving the lives of all Fijians.

We are pleased to see you all and we acknowledge and appreciate the role of the private sector, non-government organisations, academia, development partners and civil society’s contributions towards growing Fiji. We value your efforts, passion and unwavering commitment towards helping shape Fiji into a modern, sustainable and progressive society and hope that the 2 days of discussions will be productive and useful.

I wish you all the best. Thank you