Fiji Hotel and Tourism Association,26 September 2024 – The National Development Plan (NDP) 2025 – 2029 and Vision 2050 (National Development Plan – Ministry Of Finance) were launched by the Fijian Government last week.
Many people from all parts of Fiji and all walks of life took an active part – as did the Fiji Hotel & Tourism Association (FHTA). It was, after all, one of those rare opportunities we get to not just articulate the industry’s challenges to growth with the added benefit of being able to provide industry context; but we were also invited to recommended pragmatic solutions for consideration.
We are thrilled to see that many of these recommendations have been taken on board – not because it was our industry that would benefit; but because many of the challenges were shared widely across the private sector, and the recommendations to address these were recognised as being critical to support building macroeconomic confidence and the stability Fiji needs.
The NDP seeks to achieve an average annual growth rate of 4-5% over the next 5 years. Fiji’s growth rate was downgraded to 2.8% for this year following a strong economic recovery last year post the pandemic with a rebound in tourism and related sectors but may actually outperform most expectations to finish at over 3%.
We are particularly pleased to see some focus on the non-sugar sector being aligned to meet food and nutritional security needs and the strengthening of commercial agricultural production.
Crop diversification and developing improved varieties of food crops and livestock has a multiplier effect in that it would improve the livelihood and income of farming households, promote commercial agriculture and therefore exports, and support tourism reduce its currently high reliance on imported fresh produce that plays a key role in higher operational costs.
To catalyse economic growth and diversify the economy, the government has recognised that private sector participation has been constrained by substantial regulatory and bureaucratic processes and a high cost of doing business, so the plan discusses the creation of more conducive business and investment environments by reducing policy and regulatory impediments, reducing bureaucratic red tape, addressing labour and skills constraints brought on by labour migration demand from larger economies, improving the access to land and the consideration of appropriate incentives, including to SMEs that will propel their growth into the wider economy.
We can attest to focused work in these areas already underway to initially open up the biggest bottlenecks, unravel knotty processes, and then prepare to take a deeper dive into outdated regulations and legislation.
In the plan’s discussion on how it aims to uplift the socio-economic well-being of our population, we note that this includes expanding primary and secondary healthcare and improving the effectiveness of the delivery of healthcare.
This has been a key bugbear for Fijians for years. Those who can afford it have the luxury of going overseas, but the vast majority of us who cannot are left to manage with less than stellar healthcare services.
If we can commence with a very visible start for the improvement of early detection for Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) through a concerted effort of testing and access to clinical health services; this would go a long way to creating confidence that this plan has great potential.
On the strengthening of our resilience to climate change, natural disasters and environmental sustainability, we note that there is now a wider recognition that land use planning and promoting private sector investment in urban development as well as incorporating climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction measures in urban centres provides a more holistic approach to “prevention first”.
This must include protecting the environment, promoting and incentivising sustainable practices like recycling, wider practices of formal waste collections and the education and awareness of how these all work to enable us to be better prepared and therefore more self-sufficient and resilient.
There are of course, many areas in the NDP that discuss very comprehensive plans on our infrastructure needs, bringing our educational system into the 21st century, focusing on our rural and maritime areas, discussing accessibility to healthcare, education, labour, water and power, how we will lift people out of poverty, move faster to embrace renewable energy and adopt cutting edge technology.
An interesting table was provided noting a list of areas with targeted goals for where we want these economic, empowerment and governance indicators to reach while aspirational, did not provide us a column showing us where we were at now.
This missing column would let us know how hard we have to work for each aspiration.
We can guess some of them. For example, we are moving from a 2.8% (or 3%+) average growth rate for 2024 to 4-5% over the next 5 years, or for Visitor Numbers moving to 1.5m as a target is simple enough because everyone knows these numbers are currently at 929,740.
We therefore know how hard we must work to ramp up our efforts.
Not so simple for other areas like the increase in the percentage of adults owning bank accounts, net enrollment rates for early childhood, newly sealed roads in rural areas, the incidence of poverty, mobile network coverage as a percentage of the population, or women participation in board directorships in the public and private sectors, to name a few on the list.
If we want to know how hard a target is and therefore how hard we must work to address that area, then let us use that last one (women’s participation in boards) as an example, because this is expected to increase to 50% with anecdotal evidence suggesting that it is currently sitting at 11%.
Fiji – we have some work to do here.
But if we want to support Fiji’s growth and aspirations, contributing to the NDP and doing our bit to achieve targets is not all that is expected of us as Fijians.
The plan is to be supported by an Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation (IME) framework that will keep track of its quarterly and yearly implementation, with the implementing ministries expected to deliver identified high-level outcomes, which also become the KPIs of their respective Permanent Secretaries.
To institutionalize the IME, a Cabinet Sub-Committee on IME is proposed, and this will “safeguard taxpayer’s funds, optimise resource utilisation and maximise policy impacts”.
This is the government’s commitment to us on accountability and delivering this plan.
As stakeholders, we can improve the effectiveness of this National Development Plan with our ongoing engagement and feedback.
The 2050 Vision for Fiji is bold.
“Fiji aspires to be a high-income and advanced economy, a regional leader in technology and innovation in areas where it has a competitive advantage has modern and efficient infrastructure, is environmentally astute, boasts a society with high moral and ethical values, rich culture and heritage as well as entrenched in a high standard of governance and excels in sports.”
But it is Fiji’s citizens who can ensure this plan and vision are a success – by demanding and working towards this delivery.
Fantasha Lockington – CEO, FHTA (Published in the Fiji Times on 26 September 2024)
Fiji Hotel and Tourism Association
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