Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade Manoa Kamikamica says Fiji’s debt to GDP ratio is at around 75.6 percent and still remains at unsustainable levels.
Kamikamica said his Ministry continues to target higher GDP growth rates, at least five percent annually – by working together with all agencies of the Government, the private sector, and civil society.
Responding to the President’s Speech at the Opening of Parliament, Kamikamica said the Ministry of Trade believes this can be achieved by pushing for an investor-friendly environment, driving opportunities for new investment and trade growth, and pushing for the digitization of the Fijian economy.
Kamikamica said that the focus areas for his Ministry are: continued strive for an Investor friendly environment especially ease of doing business collaborating with Private Sector; continued drive to closer, stronger and broader trade and investment ties with all partners; continued drive for genuine economic diversification; continued focus on Regional hubbing agenda and; continued focus on harnessing ICT in Fiji.
The Deputy Prime Minister said the investment in Fiji continues to grow and that the current investment pipeline stands at $3 billion and is growing.
Manoa Kamikamica said there is a mood to invest in the country from renewable energy, commercial agriculture, tourism and expansion of existing operations such as Fiji Water recently.
“The Ministry of Trade has created an Investment Facilitation Committee, which is an interagency committee which looks at investment bottlenecks and tries to fix them. If things don’t move, the Minister gets involved.”
He added that the automation of business processes relating to starting business and the building permit approvals is underway – this is a pilot phase which aims to automate 25 processes across 16 agencies.
“While automation of these processes are underway, there is another exercise underway to relook at business processes in several other key agencies such as the Department of Immigration, Ministry of Environment and Lands before automation,” he said.
Parliament continues this morning.
