More than $5 billion lost because of coups – Prof. Narsey

More than $5 billion has been lost because of the coups in Fiji and all of these events have resulted in our country’s progress being stunted. We could have doubled our Gross Domestic Product if coups didn’t happen.

Electoral Reform Commissioner and economist, Professor Wadan Narsey highlighted this on fijivillage Straight Talk with Vijay Narayan when asked how much has the country lost through the coups from 1987 to date.

Professor Narsey says every coup has hurt the Fiji economy where there’s a drop in the graph and when the former Prime Minister, Voreqe Bainimarama asked him to join the military council, he told him that the coup is not going to be good.

He says the economy virtually mirrors what happens to the tourism industry and he has written his books where he talks about the cost of coups.

The Electoral Reform Commissioner says you have a graph going upwards, like the tourism arrival and when a coup happens, the graph drops, so the GDP of Fiji has been doing that right from 1987.

He says one of the interesting comparisons he made with Fiji is Mauritius, which is a small island country like ours, and their GDP per capita in 1950 was less than ours.

However, because of the coups, we suffered and suffered and today their GDP per capita is twice of Fiji and as a result only our coup makers in Fiji have benefitted.

He says the coups have done enormous harm.

Professor Narsey further says how you can explain it to ordinary people is just think about what would happen if you go to the supermarket and your income today was twice what you are receiving now.

He says it is absolutely necessary for people to take part in the consultations for the electoral law reforms.

Nationwide consultations for the electoral law reforms start on Monday.