‘Very disciplined budget’, says Singh

A WHOLE of government approach is required for the successful implementation of the budget.
This is the view of the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Insurance Company finance and planning lead Pankaj Singh who described the 2023-2024 National Budget as a transformative budget.
While sharing his views at the post budget forum organised by the Dialogue Fiji last week, he said if the government wanted its plans, priorities and objectives to be met, the line ministries needed to have the absorption capacity.
“From my perspective, it’s a very disciplined budget,” Mr Singh said.
“Assessing the key levers of the expenditure, it can be discernibly deciphered that both the revenue and expenditure policies were prudently designed to set a tangible path towards fiscal consolidation.
“And of course, this was imperative, given the multi year high level of debt as percentage of GDP.”
He said there was focus on economic diversification to ensure there was automatic steriliser especially to safeguard against major disasters or shocks.
“Because what happened in the onset of COVID, when our tourism sector was infected, there was no alternate economic driver to compensate for that vacuum.
“So, it’s very, very important that we need to work on additional economic drivers.
“And of course, investment in existing public assets is critical, given the current state of government asset base.”
Mr Singh said from the lens of enhancing the fiscal foundation the budget’s causing tensions were quite impressive.
“We focus on gender equality, disability and social inclusion.
“This you can see from the increment in the disability allowance in the range of other allowances as part of the social protection program.
“Of course, there is a strong focus on disaster resilience as well.”