Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Professor Biman Prasad says the statement issued by the FijiFirst Acting General-Secretary Faiyaz Koya reflecting on the economy is ludicrous, political point scoring and outrageous.
Prof Prasad has lashed out at the Opposition for ignoring the fact that it was the FijiFirst Government that left a dilapidated health, education and social infrastructure which the Coalition Government is trying to restore.
He said Koya must come out of the shadows of former General-Secretary Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum and work in the interest of the Fijian people.
Prof Prasad said the statement released by Koya on the economy yesterday lacked facts as was provided for by the Central Bank, where it stated that the economy has rebounded strongly over the last two years and has now returned to pre-pandemic levels much faster than earlier expected.
“Under the FijiFirst Government, three-years consecutively there were a massive economic contraction – in fact the largest economic contraction in the world.”
“This was partly due to the pandemic, 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 a substantial $9 billion in debt.”
According to the Central Bank, they noted an impressive recovery in the tourism industry with an all-time high visitor arrival of 929,740 in 2023 – a new record for Fiji.
“All the credit goes to all the hard-working tourism stakeholders, including thousands of our committed hospitality workers, and not to FijiFirst as claimed by Koya.”
The Deputy Prime Minister outlined that on the departure tax of $140, he said that the Opposition Member needed to be reminded that during their time and when he was Minister for Tourism, departure tax was $200 with an additional 25 percent tax (nine percent VAT, 10 per cent Environmental Climate Adaptation Levy CAL and six per cent Service Turnover Tax).
Prof Prasad said the claim that this Government is making the tourism market uncompetitive is ludicrous; in fact, it was the FijiFirst Government that had killed the tourism industry by overtaxing it.
He added that in the last 16 years, FijiFirst Government took credit when things were good and blames others when things went wrong.
“The 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 per cent.
“This doesn’t mean the economy is contracting as they seem to imply. The economy is 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.”
“The Government is working with the private sector and other stakeholders to address these challenges,” he added.
