Contents of national budgets should not be a surprise, says Munro Leys senior partner and Fiscal Review Committee chairperson Richard Naidu.
In his presentation at the TOPEX Conference 2024 at the Sofitel Fiji Resort and Spa, Mr Naidu said one of the things the committee had encouraged the government to do was to be more transparent about what was coming in the budget.
“What’s in the budget should not be a surprise. We shouldn’t be sitting there on budget time biting our fingernails and worrying about what new tax is going to be imposed,” Mr Naidu said.
“I think the Government has taken that on board and is trying to be transparent, it’s trying to tell everybody what’s coming, but it’s also trying to keep things stable, predictable, no new taxes, so that people can plan a little better their investments and operations,” he said.
Mr Naidu said the country’s fiscal environment at present was “pretty much challenging”.
He said it was important to remind each other of this situation because “these things basically haven’t changed”.
He noted that Government debt post-COVID had hit 90 per cent and was coming back to 80 per cent of GDP.
He added there was rising debt to GDP even before COVID, “which signalled that something wasn’t right”.
“What we are trying to do is to distill the fiscal situation. First of all, the high debt to GDP ratio, Government just doesn’t have the money to spend.
“At the same time, we got to urgently invest in physical and human capital and also infrastructure.”
He also noted skills lost, which he said was a relatively new phenomena, with more than 80,000 people who had migrated overseas.
“The triple threats we had talked about remains debt, vulnerability and the need to spend money on infrastructure, and of course productivity challenges, health and education urgently need to improve.”
