The Honourable Prime Minister;
Hon Minister’s and Assistant Ministers;
Excellencies from the diplomatic corps;
Esteemed guests.
It is with great honour and humility that I take the podium this morning, to look around and witness so many of you who have so very graciously agreed to spend the next 2 days with us, as you selflessly invest your knowledge, expertise and lived worldviews into Fiji.
The brain power and passion in this room today does not have a price tag, and as an economist I am keenly aware that the maxim often attributed to Albert Einstein rings truer at this moment, than ever before:-
“Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.”
I wholeheartedly welcome you all again to our inclusive National Economic Summit, that has been held in abeyance for more than 10 years.
The gap of more than 10 years years is significant. And, while our focus now is on the future, not the past, we must take the important lessons from the past – including what the consequences have been of our failure over that time to maintain an honest and open dialogue to diagnose and address our national problems.
At a time of great global and geopolitical shifts and turns, Fiji must continue to chart its own course for what is pragmatic, relevant and fitting for our “Made in Fiji” economic context. We cannot have a shared vision of what that is if we do not talk to each other and harness our capabilities together.
As a people, it is almost second nature for us to pitch in and help our citizens during an emergency whenever possible. When a friend, relative, neighbour or even a total stranger has a fundraising soli or a flat tyre on the road or needs an urgent blood transfusion — anyone who hears, or witnesses it immediately pitches in without a second thought. This is our way.
And for me, that is the greatest economic power we have in Fiji — that we can share the heavy load when we need to, and often without prompting.
Last year, the people spoke. They chose a new government.
As a new government we made a promise that we would be different. We made a promise that we would bring dialogue, consultation and collaboration to Fiji’s national life. And most importantly, that we would restore fundamental rights and freedoms.
This National Economic Summit is an important part of that promise. In the economic life of our country this is the beginning of genuine, open, consultation in an effort to meet our critical economic challenges.
Let me begin by confronting the big public issue about the Summit so far – what it costs.
We have been criticised over the cost of the Summit and some of our spending choices. And that is all right. That is what democracy is about. Those who bear responsibility for these decisions – like me – must embrace the flying bricks as well as the bouquets!
Three days ago, the honourable Prime Minister clarified that the cost of $360,000 was an estimate, and that the Summit has attracted significant sponsorship.
I can assure the nation today that when I provide the update of the Summit in the near future, it will be clear that this consultative process cost the taxpayers of Fiji far less than the estimated costs.
This 2-day summit before us is about the future. We cannot even begin to think about the future, if we do not have the real-time data, groundtruths and solutions that you all know intimately from your diverse spheres of lived expertise.
What I do ask as you deliberate in your spaces of thematic areas, is that you spare at least 2 minutes getting to understand your fellow group members so that your proposals are richer and stronger when weaved together. After all, we are — hashtag #TeamFiji — for the next 2 days and beyond!
You will see from the paperwork you have received, and the agenda that we have set, that a huge amount of work has gone into the Summit. It was suggested to us that non-Government participants should have been more involved in the planning.
And this is another lesson I have learned from helping to pull together this Summit. The current machinery of Government is simply not attuned to genuine consultation and collaboration. This is a process that we must re-learn.
This is in no way a criticism of the public servants in the Ministry of Finance. We are already short-staffed. Many of our people have worked long hours to organise this event. They have admirably done this work over and above their other roles, which they perform conscientiously, just to keep the financial side of Government going. So and I sincerely thank all those in my Ministry who have bought us up to this point, and who will carry it beyond the next 2 days.
For us as a Ministry, the absence of a genuine Economic Summit for the last 16 years has created the wrong thinking that only one group of people – or even one person – has a monopoly on good ideas. That is why we now lack good processes for collaboration with those outside Government.
Over the years, these have been lost. We no longer even have a network of people outside Government who we can call on and talk to. Part of this first Summit is about re-weaving this network, to know the people out there who can help us in our work.
It is one thing to get into a room and hear what people say. But it is a different thing to actively listen and then act on what we have heard, especially if what we have heard is different from what we think.
Many of you here now or following online via livestream have studied management. Many of you from outside government are much better at collaboration than we are.
Turning collaboration into action may appear to be a simple thing. But dealing with issues as complex as ours is not easy. Achieving compromise and a common way forward can actually be very trying. As we try to navigate economic policy in a new direction, re-learning these skills is critical for Government.
Some may ask why I have spent so much time talking about our process and not about the economy. The answer is that until we get our process right, we cannot change anything. And this Summit is an important part of a new process.
Additionally, we have to rebuild institutional integrity. This is fundamental as we collectively gather to overcome challenges that are current, and emerging.
Institutional integrity and re-setting the moral compass of governance are the cornerstones of a new economic direction, where we can ultimately achieve fiscal consolidation.
I want to talk briefly about the Summit process and what happens after this.
We have an intense two days ahead of us. We have plenary sessions like this one, which we hope will set the scene for more detailed discussions. Then we break into groups to discuss issues such as macroeconomic management, key growth sectors, governance and reforms and human development.
We are putting special focus on critical issues such as water resource management, transport, energy and technology. We are also casting a wider net over rural and outer islands development, land and marine-based economic activities and indigenous participation in business. There are 32 specific subject areas for discussion.
Each summit participant has been allocated a Thematic Working Group. And we invite you to contribute to other groups as well, wherever your expertise and experience can help us.
Tomorrow, when the Summit ends, we will issue a communique, attempting to summarise the conclusions we have reached and the work we need to do. And then the real work begins.
Our joint participation and engagement does not end with the Summit. We do not all go home and wait for Government to do something. We must all keep working.
We want the Thematic Working Groups to continue. We want them to organise themselves to continue meeting and to press for action on the ideas they have brought up. Some working groups, I know, will give themselves specific tasks to achieve and report on in the coming months.
The National Economic Summit Secretariat will stay on. It will continue to provide resources and support to each group that wants to continue working. We will endeavour to allocate Ministry of Finance staff and meeting spaces to those groups. And we will assist the Thematic Working groups to link up with the relevant line Ministries to share their vision.
At the next Summit we will be reporting back on progress. But of course the Secretariat will be monitoring progress between now and then, so that we keep things moving.
I want to be very clear about this. This is the new way forward. This is about Government working in continuous collaboration with those outside Government to help deliver results for Government.
We know the Government does not have the experience or the resources to do it alone. We do not have the unique perspectives of the private sector, civil society, faith-based and cultural groups, and academia. We do not have the wealth of experience and successes that many of you have, on what will work and what will not work. Help us.
I also want to be clear on another change from within this Ministry – an end to secrecy and a new attitude of openness.
None of this work that we, now or later, is secret. In fact, it is the opposite. Policymaking and execution must happen in the open. If you need information about what the Government does or what it spends, we will try, within our means, to give you that information. There is no reason to hide it.
I humbly ask for continued patience as we try to move the Government mindset from secrecy to openness. The public service operates under written and unwritten rules. The way our people work cannot change overnight. But as a Government we want to be more open and more transparent. We on our side need to understand that if people do not have the information they need, how can they be of help to us?
I encourage your working groups to co-opt others outside this Summit group to join them. Why not? If there are people whose experience and expertise we need, let us include them.
I fully expect that as we go there will be differences and disappointments. Policymaking in a democracy is not a smooth path. The Government will not be able to take up every suggestion or action point.
But what this Government wants – and what Fiji needs – is wide public participation in the process of re-shaping our economy. This is what we promised before coming into Government. And this Summit begins the delivery of that promise.
I want to keep my remarks brief, because this Summit is about the Government listening, not speaking. But let me say a couple of things about the second theme of “Re-shaping our Future”.
Significant economic opportunities lie in tourism, information technology, robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI), commercial agriculture, sports and the creative arts.
I know the Minister for Trade has a growing list of new projects to work on. Some of these projects have been unlocked by the change of government.
But to take advantage of those opportunities we must, as a nation, completely rebuild, re-weave and re-adapt. The challenges before us are deep and urgent. Many of these cannot be fixed in the four-year term of a government. They will in all likelihood take a generation.
Re-shaping our future needs investment. That investment will take huge amounts of money. It will take time, because we must consult and plan before we execute. And it will require skills and experience, some of which we must bring in from overseas, some of which we must find at home.
Finding money and saving time for these investments are our prevailing challenges. But in the area of skills and experience, we can get some quick wins by looking to our own people.
If we can bring our own people together, and align our heads and hearts to find a common way forward – we can make an important start.
I need not go into the nitty gritty of the multi-layered economic challenges before us as a nation, especially our deeply challenging levels of Government debt. But I am optimistic that the trust and confidence we build here — firstly among each other — during the next 2 days, will spin outwards and accelerate the economic winds of change that Fiji needs.
That is why we are here. We have important work to do.
I gratefully acknowledge and thank you all for the time you have given to us and the work you are prepared to do for your country. I know that we will learn from each other over the next two days and grow in our own wisdom and experience, and that we will set our beloved home of Fiji on a new path towards peace and prosperity.
I leave you with a compelling New Year’s statement, made in 1969:
“We have to strive to realise our aspirations. We cannot improve our standard of living unless we share what we produce equitably. Even with the most equitable distribution, unless we produce more, we cannot have much to share.
Our prosperity largely depends upon purposeful and tireless endeavour on the part of all. It is intelligent work accompanied by thrift which makes individuals as well as nations prosperous. Let us not forget that our destiny is largely in our hands.”
That was from the National Federation Party’s founding leader, one of the giants of Fiji’s history, Mr A D Patel, the first Social Services Minister in Fiji’s pre-Independence administration.
54 years on, we have come together once more to craft Fiji’s future. Dialogue and collaboration have returned to centre stage, where they belong.
Let’s get started.
I thank you.