It's budget revision day today as the Prime Minister gets ready to address the nation on the state of government finances and what it plans to do for the next 6 months.

High on the agenda is the expected reallocation of funds from certain ministries to key areas following the extraordinary expenditure incurred from the recent natural disasters.

But funds for expenditure in urgent areas will definitely need certain revenue measures and that will also be revealed to taxpayers today.

One of the main sources of revenue for the government is tax, and there is a lot of talk about some key revenue measures to be announced by Commodore Bainimarama later this morning.

On the civil service, with an operating expenditure still hovering near the 80 percent mark, Commodore Bainimarama recently announced that the government will now take active steps with the outsourcing of a number of government services.

This will reduce government expenditure and is likely to boost funds for capital expenditure.

These funds will then be directed towards many planned infrastructure projects.

Many such projects are currently funded through Chinese and Malaysian bank loans.

The Reserve Bank of Fiji Governor recently announced that Fiji has experienced chronic budget deficits over the past two decades.

Sada Reddy has said that the major driver of rising operating expenditure has been personnel costs.

Personnel cost as a percent of operating expenditure had been quite high at 43.5 percent in the 1990-1999 period before rising to 49.5 percent in the 2000-2009 period.

Government debt has also risen over the last two decades due to continuous deficits.

It currently stands at around 52 percent of GDP and for Fiji a more sustainable level would be around 45 percent.

We also have the major challenge of increasing exports and reducing our imports.

It will be seen today whether more measures will be announced to achieve this target.

People are eagerly awaiting the announcement to find out about the changes.

Many rounds of discussions have already taken place between Commodore Bainimarama and government officials and it now comes down to what the government has decided to deliver to the people.

It will definitely be a balancing act as the government has to keep in mind that with each expenditure allocation, there needs to be revenue, either through reallocated funds or funds from the new revenue measures.  
There are already hints of new revenue measures.

Many speculations have been made but Permanent Secretary for Finance, John Prasad said all will be revealed by Commodore Bainimarama later this morning.

Story by: Vijay Narayan