The Coalition Government needs a robust, rigorous communication policy to deal with misinformation, says University of the South Pacific (USP) lecturer in economics Dr Janesh Sami.
While speaking at the 2023 Pacific Update in Suva this week, Dr Sami said it was necessary to incorporate effective communication, inclusive policies and transparent partnership.
“I think these are the important things that the Government needs to include to take the economy forward,” Dr Sami said.
“It’s important that the Government focuses on providing confidence to private sector and that is going to fuel economic growth and sustainable development.”
He said Government could do better if it came up with a robust communication strategy.
“You need to be very careful when you’re making public policy statements. We have a new Government, still in less than six months.
“The other issue, which is very, very important, is the need for fair and balanced representation of women and other ethnic groups for statutory boards and executive positions.
“Government needs to embrace inclusivity, that if you have board members, permanent secretaries who are candidates for the political parties, who have been or they might resign, then it creates additional problem for the public sector so the Government can improvise, if they look at the issue in a more robust way.
“All executives and boards should be subject to independent scrutiny. That’s very, very important.
“And revenue reforms, we are losing about an estimated 24 per cent of total revenue to tax exemptions. So that’s one area the Government should look at.”
According to Dr Sami, a major part of the revenue reform should be to look at how FRCS could improve its revenue collection, which should be a major part of fiscal reform.
“VAT, 15 per cent I think is too high. What would be more appropriate is to conduct a phased approach to any VAT increases. And then improvise.
“A single broad rate regime of 10 to 12 per cent will not be very harmful. We’re losing about $160 million due to VAT exemptions and Government should not be cutting massive amounts of expenditure, but actually improving the quality of spending.
“So we need to expect a realistic balanced budget, we need to have some tax increases now or the difficult part will be in the upcoming budget.
“We can have a moderate rise, if you don’t want that now, the second option is massive rise in taxes in the upcoming budget. So we have to understand the problem.”
