A-G on Private Sector Injection
The Government will be making some announcements before the National Budget to help boost the private sector as the adverse economic impacts of COVID-19 take a toll on businesses.
This includes an additional second round of help from the Fiji National Provident Fund for employers heavily impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.
Attorney-General and Minister for Economy Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said companies in the private sector were facing tough times and work was being done to provide somewhat of a relief package.
Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said there were also programmes under the World Bank and Asian Development which the Government had made submissions for.
He said one programme would look at funding of around $200,000 while another programme involved US$65 million (FJ$146.57m) from the ADB and US$64 million (FJ$144.31m) from the World Bank. He said these would be used to drive the economy.
“COVID-19 has dismantled the economic fundamentals of many countries in the world, in our case we have seen what has happened to the tourism sector and there is a need to get the tourism sector back on,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said.
How do we re-engineer the tourism sector moving forward?”
Mr Sayed-Khaiyum highlighted that the deadline for budgetary submissions is this month.
“This is going to be an interesting budget given the situation we are in, so the traditional sources of revenue have dried up; the tourism sector,” he said.
“Then we need to look at things like expenditure, operational expenditure and how we do business, especially Government operations, we need to really look at that, in terms of technology usage.
“It is also an opportunity for us to think outside the box.”
The Ministry of Economy has held talks with private sector stakeholders including the Fiji-Australia Business Council and the Fiji Institute of Accountants.