Mahendra Chaudhry, our first Indo-Fijian former Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of Fiji, I personally thought gave one of the greatest economic lessons and counter-punched the arguments, lately given to us by our good friend, the present Minister of Economy, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, about the “great pie debate” (FT 5/6/21).
Mr Sayed-Khaiyum had said in the Fijian Parliament that the issue was “about growing the pie” (FT 2/6/21), whereas Mr Chaudhry clearly managed to establish in his one-page opinion piece (FT 5/6/21 Page 12) that the
‘”Economy Minister’s attempt to create an illusion of a growing pie” for our nation over the nine years of growth he boasted about, “turns out to be hollow inside”.
Hilarious as it all sounds, no-one likes to eat, see or have a pie that they paid for to be hollow inside, as Citizen Joe, finds it today to be the case, despite nine years of growth.
Also, if it is a ‘growing pie’, it is assumed that the price is relatively the same and that every time that Citizen Joe buys his pie, it is progressively not only growing – because of our nation’s prosperity – but remains full and wholesome inside, that you expect your pie to be – not slowly eroding in quality and quantity – and that it has neither been artificially inflated, to give it an illusion to be large, but hollow inside, to fool Citizen Joe.
The pie that Mr Sayed-Khaiyum, says “is all about growing” needs to remain meatier, full and enriching – and definitely not hollow inside – as Mr Chaudhry proves to be the case by showing that “Government revenues were declining to substantially below budget forecasts, creating large fiscal deficits which had to be funded by both internal and external borrowings” (FT 5/6/21).
Mr Chaudhry did not do a ‘pedestrian analysis’ as the Economy Minister had brazenly labelled Professor Biman Prasad in Parliament (FT 2/6/21) adding “any basic economist would tell you that when you talk about growth, it is about growing the pie’ and further adding salt into the wound, by saying ‘this kind of pedestrian analysis is unbecoming of some body who calls himself an economist”.
The former PM gave facts and figures. His produced a simple table showing clearly the government revenue decline for seven years – the period 2014 to 2019/20 – during which time the economy minister had been boosting of seven years of consecutive growth for Fiji. Mr Chaudhry’s figures showed that Fiji in fact had accumulated a total shortfall in government revenue of $3,674,000,000 – yes, a staggering $3.7 billion shortfall in budget estimates ranging from $351 million in 2014 to $776m in 2019/20 with a high of $1.053b in 2018/19 and a low of $221m in 2016.
In summary his table of figures showed that the Fiji Government budgeted for a revenue of $23.7b in total during the period 2014-2019/20 but received only $20.06b – a shortfall of $3.67b in revenue, consecutively in every single year in the above period.
In my view, Mr Chaudhry was able to clearly establish that the Minister of Economy did not know what he was talking about, when the minister had mentioned ‘growth’, and then went on to talk about the worsening social conditions in Fiji that the Government had failed to acknowledge.
The very sad and tearful part of the opinion piece by the former PM was his example of “Citizen Joe”, who was ‘stuck on a base minimum level of $2.68 an hour – or $5500 a year’ while the Prime Minister’s salary had “gone up from about $116,000 in 2016 to $328,750 for Voreqe Bainimarama” (FT 5/6/21) – an increase of 183 per cent.
Mr Chaudhary also highlighted that the salary for the Attorney-General had “escalated from about $85,000 to $235,000 for Mr Sayed-Khaiyum” – an increase of 176 per cent.
These salaries do not include overseas travel and per diem and other travel, meal, accommodation, entertainment and many other miscellaneous allowances and other perks, which normally in my guess would add up to a very large amount – possibly as much as the salary.
The Minister of Economy had boasted about the nine years of growth Fiji had, and that despite Australia having 23 years of growth, that nation still had to borrow ‘lots of money’ as soon as COVID-19 hit, in justification of issues raised by the Prof Prasad in Parliament.
Prof Prasad had asked the Minister of Economy in Parliament: “If we had nine years of unprecedented growth, we would not see people struggling within a week. That shows that people’s income, people’s ability, the cost of living and their wages has been on a standstill” (FT 2/6/21).
He added that the only reasons people were struggling within one or two weeks of losing jobs, was because of the fact that Fijians did not have any savings.
Mr Sayed-Khaiyum response was toxic in Parliament where he alleged that “any basic economist would tell you that when you talk about growth, it’s about growing the pie”.
“It does not necessarily mean that the Government was accumulating vast amount of gold” (FT 2/5/21). He rubbished the questions and arguments given in Parliament by the NFP leader.
The former PM not only came to the rescue of the leader of the NFP, but also gave an Economics 101 lecture to the Minister of Economy, purging the “Minister of Economy’s attempt to create the illusion of a growing pie”, which he proved factually “to be hollow inside”.
As a caveat and disclaimer, I attest to the fact that I love pies, but have been unable to afford one for a very long time.
They used to be much cheaper, but now under this Government, are very expensive and surely between three and four dollars, and I have never been able to afford one under the FijiFirst government.
Whatever the case, readers should also note that I hate hollow pies and I am sure that Mr Chaudhry’s “Citizen Joe” is also in the same boat as me.
- DR SUSHIL K SHARMA is an academic, consulting scientist, and a former employee of the British Aerospace and the Royal Saudi Air Force where he was an aviation meteorologist. Dr Sharma is a World Meteorological Organization Accredited Class 1 Professional Meteorologist, and licensed to work in any global National Meteorological Centre. He is a former Head of the Meteorology Department and also the Associate Professor of Meteorology, Fiji National University. The views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.
