No Fiji budget documents released

Updated November 27, 2009 17:53:10

Fiji's interim prime minister commodore Frank Bainimarama has announced an increase in funding for the police in his budget announced today. He says the money is needed to cover an increase in manpower next year. But when Pacific Beat contacted University of the South Pacific economist, Professor Waden Narsey, for an analysis of the budget, he couldn't do it. He says that's because there are no actual budget documents.

Presenter: Bruce Hill
Speaker: Professor Waden Narsey, University of the South Pacific economist

NARSEY: There are no printed budget documents available from the government printer, and this is probably the first time that I can ever recollect that a budget has been given by this military government or any other government, and there are no printed documents which the population can examine to see what exactly is happening to total expenditure, the total revenue, the department of allocations etc.

HILL: So was there an actual budget document presented at all or was it just a series of announcements?

NARSEY: Well there may have been something handed out wherever at the hotel that Commodore Bainimarama was making his announcement, but you can't get any specific budget document from the government printer. Apparently there'll be available by next Monday.

HILL: Was there any explanation as to why?

NARSEY: I have no idea, I have no idea where the glitch was. I think what we can say is this: that whatever they're doing is simply redistribution without growth. While the economies all want to have growth and redistribution and fair distribution, this budget is about redistribution without any growth because it has now been finalised in this last month that economic growth for this year is not going to be the positive growth that was being talked about and boasted about last year. We expect they're declining by another two-and-a-half per cent this year, and I suppose they'll blame the flood and they'll blame this and they'll blame that, but the reality is that our economy is not just performing. And of course the fact of the matter really is that Commodore Bainimarama has no authority whatsoever to be doing all this. At the April Court of Appeal judgement clearly set out that in fact he was totally illegal. So here he is without any justification from the voters of this country, he is taking money from them as taxes and he's deciding how he wants to spend that money.

HILL: Well we're supposed to do an analysis of the budget but in the absence of any papers, is there anything in what he said that we can analyse?

NARSEY: Well what I've heard through the grapevine for instance is that he has given the military a bonus, allegedly out of savings this year. So the Education Ministry is looking for money, the Health Ministry is looking for money, people are being retired at the age of 55 even if they have great experience and all that allegedly to keep a curb on the budget, and Commodore Bainimarama has given more than a $10 million dollar bonus to the military. And apparently from what little things I can see there's also been a very healthy increase for the police department. So I think we pretty well know where the priorities of this military government are.

HILL: We've already had some criticism of the budget, well not the budget itself because we don't know what's in the budget, but of the speech anyway. T he Fiji Cane Growers Association is very critical of the fact that the word sugar or sugar industry were not even mentioned once during this 40-minute speech?

NARSEY: Well that is of course an extraordinary thing in itself because sugar is one of the industries which can earn export earnings and all that, and it used to be the major industry not too long ago. But they're heading for a record low production of sugarcane and record low production of sugar output, despite the fact that we've had more than $100 million invested in milling efficiency in the last year or so. So goodness knows what on earth has happened to all that investment. I mean really in the absence of Auditor General's reports about what took place in 2007, what took place in 2008, we have no idea anyway whether these budget documents are accurate, truthful pieces of paper or whether they are simply giving out whatever data they can massage since there's no independent check on what actually is going on. So really it is a total mess. The economy is going down the drain. While a few Indo-Fijians may be appointed to the high places and so on, the average Indo-Fijian in the country are suffering and all they have got in front of them of course, which many of them are very glad about is this rhetoric of racial equality.