The Nadi Chamber of Commerce and Industry has labelled the 2025-2026 National Budget as “quite fair and inclusive one”.
Chamber president Lawrence Kumar said the new fiscal budget outlined essential initiatives that had emerged from a comprehensive public dialogue process with various targeted groups.
He said the new budget prioritises tackling socio-economic challenges while also maintaining macroeconomic stability.
Mr Lawrence said he was glad about measures taken to support the average families in areas such as a reduction of Value Added Tax (VAT) from 15 per cent to 12.5 per cent while maintaining the Government needs to exercise prudent reductions to avoid revenue losses and have a balance on reductions on VAT to ensure government operations are not heavily affected due to lack of revenue collected if VAT is heavily reduced.
“Other sectors such as the Ministry of Public Works which has been provided with $800 million in the new financial year with the Fiji Road Authority taking $388 million, and the Water Authority of Fiji $284m, is one of the largest investments in infrastructure.
“Such investment is going to help the economy grow and create employment as well,” Mr Kumar said.
He said it was encouraging to see that other major sectors such as health had been prioritised with an increase from $451.8m to $611.6 million, with the continuation of a free medical scheme with a budget of $10 million that is dedicated to a free medical scheme with substantial increase from last year’s budget.
Mr Kumar said the bus fare reduction by 10 per cent was going to assist the general public in daily travel while having a social benefit increase of five percent from last year is surely a plus point as well.
“The housing assistance for first-time homebuyers with those first-time homebuyers between the brackets of $0 to $50,000 annual income getting $30,000 grant with the first-time land purchase, getting a $20,000 for a first-time buying as well, such initiative would surely promote home ownership.”
He said the announcement of an 8.75 percent interest payment to FNPF members remains quite positive and will boost confidence among members.
“It is quite a huge increase. Such a substantial payment of 8.75 percent has not been done in many years, so is one of those very key initiatives and key outcomes out of this budget to the FNPF members.”
In terms of revenue, Mr Kumar said collection is projected at $3.9 billion, with an expected projected expenditure of $4.8b, a deficit of $886m.
“The deficit is relatively high, but I understand where the Government is coming from with the global crisis upon us and the ever-increasing cost of freight, the Government needs to take such bold initiatives to assist the average income earner and assist the citizens of Fiji.”
