NGO: More Awareness to Grassroots Level Vital
The Fiji Council Of Social Services (FCOSS) is supporting calls for awareness drives at grassroots level on Fiji’s national debt.
FCOSS executive director Vani Catanasiga described the need as “urgent” as the impact on communities of resolving the country’s debt situation will not be the only thing they will be dealing with.
“They need to understand what changes need to happen at their level to maintain wellbeing and resilience, particularly as we consider that annually we experience cyclones, flooding and other impacts of climate change,” Ms Catanasiga said.
She also called for stronger funding support to organisations engaged in this work.
“Governments and development partners, especially multilaterals do not have adequate skills or experiences to speak about these issues to the communities directly,” Ms Catanasiga said.
“Thus the importance of supporting organisations like FCOSS, PIANGO (Pacific Islands Association of NGOs) and others such as CCF (Citizens Constitution Forum) who have worked in the public finance management space and do a fair bit of translating on policies so that communities can continue to engage in decisions regarding their development and wellbeing.
“As local organisations we often struggle to get resources to do this work effectively, so we are fortunate that UNDP and the European Union see the value in investing in this important work.”
She said FCOSS has been in partnership with PIANGO and UNDP since 2020 to promote community awareness in public finance.
“This work continues this year and we had convened a workshop for our members a week before the Economic Summit. Our members had the opportunity to hear from economists from the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and even the Ministry of Finance who gave us an overview of our economic status including the debt situation,” she said. “We had great support from Jubilee Australia (an NGO that specialises on debts too) who ran the second day of our workshop.”
Last week, the NGO PANG (Pacific Network On Globalisation) in partnership with overseas-based Third World Network also held a Fiji Debt awareness workshop attended by representatives of other civil society groups.
Last year, Fiji’s total outstanding debt reached $9.1 billion, or 91.1% of GDP, compared to $7.7 billion in 2021, according to the Ministry of Economy’s 2021/2022 Annual Debt Report.
The sharp increase was attributed to COVID-19 related borrowings and major contraction in Fiji’s economy due to the pandemic.