Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Professor Biman Prasad says people like Acting FijiFirst General Secretary, Faiyaz Koya ignore the fact that his FijiFirst government left a dilapidated health, education and social infrastructure which the coalition government is now fixing after Koya said the lack of serious confidence in the economy has left Fiji in a much debilitated state now.
Professor Prasad says his advice to Koya is to move out of the shadows of Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum and carve a new approach to politics in the interest of the country and embrace the freedom and inclusive nature of governance that the Coalition Government has provided to the people of Fiji.
He says Koya obviously and deliberately ignores the full facts as was provided in the Reserve Bank of Fiji statement where the RBF had said many things including the economy has rebounded strongly over the last two years and has now returned to pre-pandemic levels much faster than earlier expected.
The Deputy Prime Minister says Koya needs to be reminded that under the FijiFirst Government, there were 3 years of massive economic contraction since 2019 (in fact we had one of the largest economic contractions in the world).
He says this was partly due to COVID and largely due to the FijiFirst Government's economic mismanagement and inability to diversify the economy, get the private sector driving growth and their voodoo economics of spending too much without having the money and burdening our people with over $9 billion in debt which will take decades to pay.
Professor Prasad adds the RBF noted the impressive recovery in the tourism industry with an all-time high visitor arrival of 929,740 in 2023 - a new record for Fiji.
He says here the credit goes to all the hardworking tourism stakeholders, including thousands of our committed hospitality workers, and not to FijiFirst as claimed by Koya.
On the departure tax of $140 from 1st January 2024, Professor Prasad says Koya needs to be reminded that during their time and when he was Minister for Tourism, departure tax was $200 with an additional 25 percent tax (9 percent VAT, 10 percent ECAL and 6 percent STT).
He adds now we have $140 departure tax ($60 lower) and a 15 percent VAT only (so 10 percent lower).
Professor Prasad says this claim that the Coalition Government is making the tourism industry uncompetitive is ludicrous.
He says in fact, it was the FijiFirst Government that had killed the tourism industry by overtaxing it.
The Deputy Prime Minister says for the last 16 years we had seen that the FijiFirst like to take credit when things are good and blame others when it is not in their favour.
He says in terms of 2024, the Coalition Government agrees with the RBF assessment that after the massive recovery in the tourism industry and the overall economy, growth will taper off to the trend growth rate of around 3 percent.
Professor Prasad says this doesn't mean the economy is contracting as they seem to imply.
He says we are now returning to trend growth as the tourism industry has peaked with capacity constraints now, our resource sectors are not doing as well as they should do and the skill migration is having an impact on the workforce and the economy.
He adds nonetheless, the Coalition Government is working with the private sector and other stakeholders to address these challenges.
Professor Prasad says they have as a government already put in plans and budget to accelerate the technical training, and they are removing the bottlenecks that have been identified through good and inclusive stakeholder dialogue and discussion.
The Deputy Prime Minister says there are also investments as pointed out by Investment Fiji that are taking off and they will all contribute to the overall economic growth.
Professor Prasad says since coming to government they have provided massive assistance to the families, to the children and to support farmers and efforts towards increasing production in our agricultural sector.
He says these measures include increases in social welfare, and back to school support of $200 each to all students from pre-school to form seven.
The Deputy Prime Minister says more than 220,000 students benefitted from this innovative and timely initiative of the Coalition Government put in place immediately after coming into government.
He says they have forgiven the $650 million TELS loan which was a burden to about 53,000 families.
Professor Prasad says in addition, support to sugar cane farmers was provided in the form of the top up price which resulted in the payment of the highest ever cane price for farmers in the history of this country.
He says it is time for FijiFirst to become constructive and meaningful.
The Deputy Prime Minister says they have wasted a year in opposition by making wasteful and sometimes childish criticisms of government policies.
He says he knows Koya's party declined to accept the invitation to join in the discussion on the formulation of the national development plan currently being formulated.
He wants to thank the political parties, including the leader of the Unity Party Savenaca Narube for making their time to contribute constructively to the development of the plan.
Koya says the recent statement of the Reserve Bank of Fiji about the economy is an indication of the alarming trajectory for Fiji and what has been said, is what the FijiFirst warned the Coalition Government about back during the budget debates last year.
Koya says we have seen a record number of tourist arrivals of 929,740 to our shores and a record flow of remittances of $1.25 billion, which has bolstered the economy but this has been on the back of the post-COVID recovery plan of the FijiFirst.
Koya says rhe Government’s move to increase VAT to 15 percent and the recent increase in Airport Departure Tax from $125 to $140 has seen Fiji become overpriced in the global tourism market.
He says clearly, the ripple effect of these increases is lost to the Coalition Government as they have been economical with the truth to the people by saying that these increases are to pay off the national debt.
Koya says this has definitely not been the case.
The FijiFirst Acting General Secretary says they are seeing that the people of Fiji are unable to shoulder the burdens of this government's economic plans, anyone can go and ask local businesses who will tell you that the increases have seen people spend less and thus they have less to spend on investments.
He claims the same applies to overseas investors who are not investing because of the lack of confidence in the economy.
Koya adds we have also seen approximately 6 percent of our population leave our shores and this has added an additional burden on our economy as we have lost many of our skilled workers.
He says the truth of the matter is that this report shows that Fiji has begun a deceleration of our economy from being one of the top 5 fastest growing economies post-COVID back in 2022 but the RBF release shows that this is but a fading memory.
Koya says it would seem that the Coalition Government has neither been innovative nor creative in their economy policies that has seen the rich get richer and the poor struggling to survive.
He claims all this talk of investments, yet we have seen nothing on the ground.
Koya says there has been little to no expenditure on infrastructure, there has been little in the way of incentives to create more jobs and all we have seen is an increase of approximately $1 billion in new debts placed on the nation without anything to show for it.
He says the fallacy that there is major debt to pay doesn’t quite match the fact that more debt has been taken on and this could obviously only be achieved due to the fact that the previous debts were well managed and thus allowed the government to borrow more.
He says the bottom line is this government has not created an environment that is investor friendly and one that looks after all the people of Fiji in a genuine and compassionate manner.
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