Prof. Prasad criticizes Opposition for ignoring budget measures and economic progress

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Professor Biman Prasad says the Opposition completely ignores the measures put in the national budget to help those who need them.

Professor Prasad says almost $100 million has gone to more than 60,000 families in the past 2 years to prepare their children for back-to-school support, social welfare support was increased and the government also increased budget for health services, kidney dialysis and agriculture subsidies and all this came from the revenue that the government collected.

While speaking on cost of living, Professor Prasad says a farmer from Ba has messaged him to tell the Opposition that the price of flour has gone down from $22 for 10kg to $15 and 10kg rice has gone down from $25 to $19.

He says the Bureau of Statistics and the Reserve Bank have said that inflation was 5 percent in 2023, gone down to 3.6 percent in January and the trend is very good.

The Deputy Prime Minister says the impact of the VAT increase from 9 percent to 15 percent was temporary.

The Deputy Prime Minister has revealed that in the first 6 months of the financial year, the government has managed to achieve almost 99 percent of the budget tax revenue and compared to the same period last year, total revenue collection has increased by $458 million or 34 percent and tax revenue collection has increased by $367 million or 31 percent.

Professor Prasad says similarly, non-tax revenue has also increased by $92 million or 56 percent.

He says the government has reduced the fiscal deficit from an average of 9 percent to 4.8 percent of the GDP and plans to bring it further down to 3.5 percent in the 2024-2025 national budget.

He says the reduction in the deficit was critical to put the debt trajectory on a path of sustainability.

Professor Prasad says for the first half of this fiscal year, the Government has recorded a net deficit of $114.9 million, equivalent to minus 0.9 percent of the GDP – a surplus.

He says this is much lower than the targeted net deficit and has revealed that the government has already collected $1.8 billion in revenue which is almost half of what has been forecast for the year.

Professor Prasad says for the first six months Government expenditure totaled $1.9 billion, which represents around 44.1 percent of the total budgeted expenditure and they agree that it is lower than what they expected but as they approach the second half of the year, they expect expenditure to increase and some of the projects would not be delayed.

Professor Prasad says he is highlighting this as FijiFirst MP Premila Kumar and some others claim that the government will not be able to collect the revenue.

The Deputy Prime Minister further says the Opposition had said the government had the wrong fiscal policy, however, he acknowledged the Leader of the Opposition for making good suggestions for the economy.