It’s official: financial year

Bill for change in fiscal format gains passage

Finance Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said many countries were looking at changing their financial year; they were interested after the issue was raised at the recent International Monetary Fund/ World Bank meeting.

Government successfully pushed through the legislation to change its fi nancial year in Parliament yester- day. This is after the Financial Management (Amendment) Bill was passed with 30 agreeing, 13 disagreed while seven did not vote.

The bill will cater for Government’s policy initiative to change the fiscal year of Government from January 1st to December 31st from the previous year to August 1st to 31st July the following year. In other words it is known as the Budget 2016 to 2017. Attorney-General and Minister for Finance minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said many countries were looking at changing their financial year; they were interested after the issue was raised at the recent International Monetary Fund/World Bank meeting. He said most countries that had been trading partners with Fiji had different fiscal formats. “We are changing the financial year of ours from January to December, from now it will be from 1st August to the 31st of July,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said. “The change to a non–calendar year must always be motivated by economic reasons, improving of productivity and implementing of policies. “This is what Government has assessed and this is the new dates that we are bringing about and we urge everybody to support.” National Federation Party leader, Biman Prasad said the changes made to the financial year was ‘unacceptable’ and was a suspected political motive by Government for the 2018 general elections.