Former governor of Reserve Bank of Fiji, Savenaca Narube believes as many as 400,000 people in Fiji live below the poverty line and last year’s Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) may not reflect the true picture on the ground.

In an exclusive interview with The Fiji Times, Mr Narube has called on the Government to conduct another HIES as soon as possible to determine the true state of poverty in Fiji.

“I hope this Government will update the study that was done by the previous government on poverty and income disparity,” he said.

“I have no confidence in the statistics of the previous government. No confidence whatsoever because they have been heard and seen to doctor those kinds of statistics, which is not what we want.

“We want an independent measurement of those statistics.”