As members of parliament we can survive on $40,000 – Prasad

National Federation Party Leader, Professor Biman Prasad says they need to think about the injection of money into the pockets of people who will spend almost all of it as it will help the economy.

Professor Prasad says government should also look at how they can save every single cent adding that he has said it before in parliament, why do they need so many assistant ministers right now.

Professor Prasad says as members of parliament, they can survive on $40,000.

He says the guarantee that the government is giving to the Fiji Development Bank would have been an opportune time to steer the lending out of the $170 million borrowing to specifically help the people.

Professor Prasad says they could have had a very clear plan by FDB together with government and the lender, the Reserve Bank of Fiji as to how they want to help the people.

He adds the final quarter appropriation statement by the Ministry of Economy presented to the Parliament sometime ago showed that from 1st of May to 31st of July 2018, a sum of $110 million was redeployed from the heads of the budget for disaster rehabilitation.

He says the need probably now for some form of redeployment of funds is bigger than what in his view was bigger than in 2018, which was an election year.