Importing skilled workers in the face of the loss of local employees will be made easier.

“As we battle the loss of our skills to overseas countries, we have continued to complicate life for local businesses needing to import skills, both short and long-term,” Finance Minister Biman Prasad.

“This includes the Immigration Department, where we believe that we can spend a little bit of money on more personnel and systems to make the work permit process more efficient.

“We believe there is scope to increase fees charged by the department and the economic payback for Government is very quick. “We have already taken some steps to ease the pressure on the grant of short-term work permits.

“We will also look at wider immigration law reforms which will align Fiji better in the global economy and which will take advantage of the increasing mobility of people and economic capital.

“We will be setting up another working group on this.”

He said many businesses large and small were frustrated by the time it took them to get routine offshore payments through the exchange control and tax clearance processes between RBF and FRCS.

“RBF and FRCS worked together earlier this year to make these processes more flexible and less bureaucratic.”