The Fijian economy is poised for the 6th consecutive year of economic growth.
Those were the words of Deputy Governor for the Reserve Bank of Fiji Ariff Ali while speaking at the Budget Forum at Grand Pacific Hotel.
He says Tourism is strong so far in 2015.
According to Ali, the forecast for his year in relation to visitor arrivals is a growth of five percent and the record that was achieved last year can be surpassed which was just under 700,000 visitor arrivals.
He adds the tourism earnings this year will most probably be around $1.5 billion.
He highlighted that sugar production is marginally lower than last year.
He confirms the crushing started a week late, so to discount on the delay in crushing, the total cane crushed and sugar produced was a bit low.
He also says cement production is up by 15.6% and electricity in the first seven months was slightly up by 2.2% and consumption up by 5%. He also says this is an indicator that construction activity grew by about 46%.
Ali says there is a positive turnaround in gold production.
He adds consumer spending remains strong and personal remittance is up by 35% for the first seven months of this year compared to last year. He says the personal remittance last year was $383m whereas this year it may reach close to $450 million.
He says this is in a period where the world economy is not growing very strongly.
He adds Pay As You Earn collection went up by 14.6% which is an indicator that more and more people are employed.
Ali says bank lending for investment purposes went up by a massive 76% so far this year compared to same period last year.
He says this year government expects to spend 40 cents of every dollar on capital and 60 cents on every dollar. He adds last year 66 cents went to operating expenditure while 34 cents to capital.
He says prior to 2007, 15 percent of government expenditure went to capital and 85 percent was on operating expenditure including paying
civil servants salary and taxes.
He also says over a last couple of years our exports have increased from a billion to two billion dollars. He says this is due to the improvement in the sugar industry, increase export of garment, fish and timber.
On the other hand he says our imports continue to rise as we need to import food, machinery and fuel which is close to worth $5 billion.
Ali also says by the end of this month our foreign reserves will be $2.017 billion which is enough to cover five months of import.
Meanwhile, Attorney General and Minister for Finance Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum highlighted in the forum that government’s focus as an administrative organisation is to improve efficiency.
He says the advertisements for permanent secretaries are out and the Public Service Commission has outsourced the recruitment to an Australian based company.
He says one specific area they would like to focus on is housing which is very‑very critical.
The Forum is being attended by the private and public sector, faith based organisations as well as the business community.
