By Staff Writer
Former Minister of Commerce, Labour and Industry, Lautafi Selafi Purcell analyse national budget in Parliament debate.
Samoa should start looking ahead to funding its own national budget fully rather than continuing to rely on donor support from New Zealand, Australia and other main foreign assistance providers.
This is the longterm vision of the former Minister of Commerce, Labour and Industry, Lautafi Selafi Purcell, after an analysis of the national budget debated in Parliament during the week just ended.
‘We should look ahead to the next 5-10 years to what we can do to achieve this goal,” Lautafi challenged.
“We have to start thinking outside the box if we want to look seriously at helping overcome on our own the poor state our economy is in from the damaging impacts of health, climate change and war.”
The Lautafi budget analysis included observations of the smallest spending allocations in the 2022-2023 estimates.
Around $700m tala is budgeted that included $84m tala in general budget support from donor assistance.
The former Minister worried about the Ukraine war escalating the cost of fuel that is already felt as far away as Samoa after only a few months.
The forecast of the war continuing for the next 4-years puts a lot of future gloom for the national economy in his forecast.
New variants of the COVID 19 pandemic virus are unsettling as well and what possible damages are in store for the economy as they continue to spread even closer to Samoa.
The losses from climate change have already been felt as recent as flooding in several heavily populated locations in central Apia.
“Our main donor partners like Australia and New Zealand are forced to re-allocate their humanitarian assistance for the people affected by the war in Ukraine.
“ The setbacks in the global economy from the pandemic and climate change have also affected these donor countries and us indirectly with the loss of assistances for our development needs.
“Remittances as the main source of revenue for Samoa are also affected when the diaspora are unable to provide normal amounts for families here, because their jobs and regular earnings are affected too.”
His suggestion for ways to stimulate the local economy includes the push to entice outside investors similar to having Yazaki Samoa car harness factory that employed up to 3 thousand workers.
Commercial farming to provide more job opportunities should be encourage as sustainable investments rather than subsistence as it is still common practice for many.
While the opening of the travel borders is intended to review the leading revenue earner for Samoa, more trade and manufacturing opportunities have to be promoted.
“Our economy will always be prone to the effects of the global economy and we should start looking at the bigger development picture for us.”
Lautafi believes very firmly that the national economy will be able to cope better with the external impacts of the global economy by easing up the dependence on outside budget support as we continue to rely on.