Biman hits back at Chaudhry
THE Coalition Government has mitigated increase in VAT through various measures, stresses the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Professor Biman Prasad.
His comment follows the Fiji Labour Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry’s statement that Prof Prasad’s claims that January’s inflation rate was down to 3.7 per cent, rings hollow to the general shopper for whom the price of goods on the supermarket shelf, and almost everywhere else, continued to rise.
Prof Prasad said Mr Chaudhry was fully aware inflation statistics are collected and released by the Fiji Bureau of Statistics, which is an independent and professional agency.
“We have raised the number of VAT-free items and basic goods to 22 including prescribed medicine,” Prof Prasad said.
“We have reduced import duties on meat like chicken and lamb. We have removed debt burden of more than 23,000 students on TELS by writing off over $650million in education loans.
“We have for the last two school years provided $200 to every child in primary and secondary schools from families with an income of less than $50,000 per annum as back to school assistance.
“The social protection budget was increased by $52.5million.”
He said Mr Chaudhry was fully aware that inflation statistics were collected and released by the Fiji Bureau of Statistics, which was an independent and professional agency.
“As per the Fiji Bureau of Statistics numbers, inflation stood at 3.6 per cent in January 2024, lower than the 5.1 per cent recorded at the end of last year.
“This means that the rate of the increase in prices have slowed compared to December last year. This 3.6 per cent inflation rate is based on the 2014 Consumer Price Index (CPI) weights and FBOS has already developed the 2019 CPI weights which will be released from later this year.”
Prof Prasad said when they came into Government, it was necessary to take an urgent control on the country’s debt level.
“This was also the people’s mandate for us. The FijiFirst government’s economic philosophy of spending more by ever increasing borrowings increased our national debt from around $3billion to over $9billion.
“This was unsustainable, and we were on a verge of a debt crisis with far severe pain and suffering. So when we came into Government, we had to decisively deal with this mess that was left for us, just like when you are sick you need to take some bitter medicine otherwise you will need a major surgery or risk your life.”