SUVA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The Fijian government announced on Friday night its 2019/2020 national budget which is estimated to generate a revenue of 3.49 billion Fijian dollars (about 1.62 billion U.S. dollars), passing the 3 billion Fijian dollars (about 1.39 billion U.S. dollars) threshold for the first time.
According to the national budget announced in Parliament, the Fijian government will collect this revenue without raising VAT, without increasing corporate taxes and without increasing the personal income tax threshold.
The projected expenditure for the 2019/2020 national budget is 3.84 billion Fijian dollars (about 1.78 billion U.S. dollars), reflecting a lower deficit of 2.7 percent of GDP, down from 4.4 percent in 2017/2018 and 3.4 percent in 2018/2019.
With a GDP of 12.7 billion Fijian dollars (about 5.89 billion U.S. dollars) and debt 5.98 billion Fijian dollars (about 2.77 billion U.S. dollars), the island nation's debt to GDP is projected to 47.1 percent of GDP. As of this month, Fiji's Foreign Reserves is around 1.92 billion Fijian dollars (about 891 million U.S. dollars), which is equivalent to 4.2 months of imports of goods and services and the current rate of inflation stands at 2.1 percent.
Total debt at the end of July 2018 stood at 5.22 billion Fijian dollars (about 2.42 billion U.S. dollars) equivalent to 45.9 percent of GDP.
As of May 2019, inflation stood at 2.1 percent, lower than 4.8 percent recorded at the end of 2018.
