Fiji and its people aspire to be a high-income country by 2050, bringing a better quality of life for all, says Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Professor Biman Prasad.
In his ministerial statement on the National Development Plan 2025-2029 and Vision 2050 in Parliament last week, Prof Prasad said achieving this vision would require ambitious reforms and tackling long standing issues that have held us back from economic and social progress.
“A business-as-usual approach will not achieve this vision,” Prof Prasad said.
“Some of the key issues the NDP identifies that we need to address include labour productivity, infrastructure deficit in transportation and health sectors, female and youth labour force participation rate, investor and business confidence, ongoing skills mismatch and political stability.”
He called for commitment to prudent and effective planning in the implementation of the NDP in achieving the KPIs identified in the plan.
“There is need to ensure this plan is based on availability of resources (aligning resources with revenue forecasts to maintain financial stability) and guarding against the pitfall of over ambitious projections and underfunded priorities.
“The ministry is focusing on developing a detailed implementation plan with clear resource allocations.
“I urge all for effective coordination and collaboration between the Government and development partners to maximise resource utilisation.
“I believe the silo approach towards service delivery has persisted and limited the intended purpose of the program approach to planning and implementation in the Government.
“The process of implementation is anchored on a result-oriented, transparent, and accountable implementation, monitoring and evaluation mechanism.
“Monitoring will involve regular gathering of data to assess progress towards the desired outputs and outcomes, reporting of the progress based on set timelines, and timely intervention to undertake corrective measures, where necessary.
“State capacity and coordination are also crucial in ensuring an effective implementation and achieving the outcomes of the NDP.”
Prof Prasad said Government was committed to building and expanding capacity in the civil service towards policy planning and execution for the effective implementation and achieving of NDP outcomes.
“The annual national budgets will be based on the development priorities set out in the NDP and will provide the financial resources to support the implementation.”
