The Fiscal Review Committee chaired by prominent lawyer, Richard Naidu says that the question of Parliamentarians\u2019 pay needs to be revisited with a proper public consultation and independent evaluation process.<\/p>\n
While giving their view on the 2024\/2025 National Budget in a letter to Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Professor Biman Prasad, the Fiscal Review Committee says public confidence in the quality of Government administration is critical to achieving its economic objectives.<\/p>\n
It says citizens will not support Government initiatives or align their energies with them \u2013 whether as investors, volunteers, public servants or even taxpayers if they do not believe that the Government is working effectively and productively in the nation\u2019s interest.<\/p>\n
The Richard Naidu led Committee says in their view, the broad public sense is that the Government is not working to full capacity – or particularly productively.<\/p>\n
They say the recent saga over Parliamentary pay rises, which the Prime Minister himself acknowledges was poorly managed, was another dent in public confidence.<\/p>\n
It says issues such as frequent foreign travel by Government Ministers, while not fiscally insignificant, have an outsize impact on public perceptions of the productivity and accountability of the Government.<\/p>\n
The Committee says conversely, if the Government could show improvements in discipline in these politically sensitive areas it could have a significant positive economic impact.<\/p>\n
The Committee encourages the Government to make serious and demonstrable commitments to reduce expenditure on Government Ministers\u2019 travel and perquisites.<\/p>\n
Overall, the Committee believes that the Government\u2019s decisions in the 2023-24 National Budget to significantly increase taxes, in particular corporate tax and VAT, were bold and necessary.<\/p>\n
They say the tax measures did not conform exactly with the Committee\u2019s specific recommended measures but they were in the Committee\u2019s view appropriate in principle.<\/p>\n
The Committee says they responded to the urgent need to properly fund Government operating and capital expenditure, particularly infrastructure, where there is serious \u201ccatching up\u201d to do on water and sewerage, roads and bridges, hospitals and health centres and other critical facilities such as school buildings, avoid large deficits and create a \u201cfiscal buffer\u201d to enable Government to respond to future shocks such as major weather events, stabilize and begin to reduce the critical Government debt to GDP ratio.<\/p>\n
fiji village<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Fiscal Review Committee chaired by prominent lawyer, Richard Naidu says that the question of Parliamentarians\u2019 pay needs to be revisited with a proper public consultation and independent evaluation process. While giving their view on the 2024\/2025 National Budget in a letter to Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Professor Biman Prasad, the Fiscal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,222],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiji-news","category-latest-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10327,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10325\/revisions\/10327"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}