Business

Stimulus packages needed in 2019/2020 Budget; Ali

May 23, 2019 12:27 pm

Reserve Bank Governor Ariff Ali

Economic growth for Fiji this year has been revised downwards from the initial 3.4 percent to 2.7 percent.

Reserve Bank Governor Ariff Ali explains there are a few attributing factors to this.

One he says is a new GDP base forecast and last year’s revision upwards.

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With the budget now a little over two weeks away, Ali says he expects the government will want to look at underperforming sectors to offer stimulus packages where possible to ensure projected growth is sustainable.

“It’s because seeing the trend in the global economy, world economy growth has slowed down, most of our trading partner’s growth has been revised down so this will impact tourism. Tourism is still expected to grow but maybe slightly slower than what we’d expected. And based on the trends we’ve seen over the last few months, some sectors are weaker than expected. So in light of the lower growth in GDP, what we really would need is some, in the budget, hopefully what we will see is that is that you know boost for investment, particularly domestic, private sector investment.”

Meanwhile, the Governor says liquidity in the market is now around $350 million which is sufficient for the current economic activities.