Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama says National Federation Party Leader, Professor Biman Prasad comes up with baseless motions for money wasting ideas.
Bainimarama highlighted this while opposing Professor Prasad’s motion that Parliament authorises the Standing Committee on Economic Affairs to assess the impact of direct initiatives to farmers in the agricultural sector in particular the distribution of seeds and seedlings for cash crop, help in the form of materials provided to dairy farmers, provision of irrigation pumps/piping, rice planting, ploughing and harrowing of land by the Ministry of Agriculture, handling of breeder goats/sheep and report back at the next sitting of Parliament.
The Prime Minister questions why should the committee be tasked to do what an ordinary Fijian can, which is to read the extreme facts and data that government publishes regularly.
Bainimarama says if Prasad wants to assess the impacts of the initiatives and the current overall performance, he can read that data.
He says throughout the pandemic, the agricultural sector was a reliable and resilient sector that rose to record strength, supporting livelihood and enhancing Fiji’s nutrition security.
Bainimarama says agricultural exports crossed the $100 million mark for the first time in 2020.
He says after all this, Prasad still called the initiatives a juvenile attempt.
Bainimarama says SODELPA MP Inosi Kuridrani made a statement saying that the contribution of Agriculture to GDP has declined since 2013, but he did not say that the volume of agricultural export is at a record high.
