Bold Budget Brings Hope
There’s so much that’s good to digest in Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum’s presentation of the 2021-22 National Budget. The Attorney-General and Minister for Economy outlined a way of hope ahead. Only the always blinkered Opposition critics and jaundiced journalists could not see this.
Let’s take one issue. This is the target of December for our borders to open.
This brings hope for our tourism industry, for jobs and our economy as a whole.
Mr Sayed-Khaiyum stressed that by this Christmas, if we reach our vaccination targets, we could be fully protected from the coronavirus. That’s thanks to widespread immunity through vaccines.
For all Fijians, vaccines are free and easy to access. Government wants to have at least 80 per cent of the 587,651 Fijians who make up the target population fully vaccinated by October 31 –– in other words, 470,121 adults.
If we achieve widespread immunity from the virus we can start getting back to our normal way of life. We can secure the chance to reopen to the world and have the world reopen to us.
Our borders could be open to some of our most important source markets of tourism. Planes could be flying. Careers could be restored.
Government revenues could be on the rise so we could deliver even more services and achieve more of our vision for the country.
That’s not just the view from this page.
One of our most important and influential men in tourism, Tony Whitton, Managing Director of the Rosie Travel Group was very impressed with the budget announcement. It brought hope to them.
Mr Whitton operates the biggest local tourism business. He has resorts, inbound tour businesses, and local tours and event management in Rosie’s impressive portfolio.
He says: “The closure of our borders for over a year has had a dramatic impact on our economy. Over 100,000 workers that relied directly or indirectly on tourism are without work.
“And over 15,000 tourism and associated businesses without any cash flow for over 15 months.
“The important statement from the Minister of Economy, ‘We hope to have tourists back by Christmas’, as an industry we also share this hope.”
Another influential source, the BDO Budget Brief, says: “Recovery is based on expected reopening of borders to international travel by early or mid-2022 and Government’s initiative to rejuvenate the domestic economy activities. The resumption of tourism activity will lead to broad-based growth in 2022 and 2023 as overall domestic demand rebounds.”
Our major tourism competitors from places like Phuket and Bali face the same challenges.
They are already doing everything they can to reopen fully.
They are innovative and aggressive. So are tourism markets around the world.
We can reopen too if we follow the clear map forward set out in the Budget.
But as it also points out it needs everyone to support this. It needs everyone to vaccinate. It needs the COVIDIOTS who still hold drinking parties, cross containment borders, not wear masks, not follow COVIDSAFE protocols to be called out and stopped.
And together we can reopen. Mr Sayed-Khaiyum has outlined the way. It’s up to all of us now.
MARAIA VULA
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