Tonga’s Minister of Finance and National Planning, Dr ‘Aisake Eke, is confident that the economic target will be achieved this financial year.
Dr. Eke highlighted this while opening the Government and Development Partners Forum meeting this week.
Tonga’s target for this year includes improving capacity in terms of investment in infrastructure and others and also for the economy to grow.
This current fiscal year has a projected economic growth of more than 3%, and the Ministry of Finance stressed this is mainly caused by the country’s sound macro-economic systems and financial liquidity of the banks.
“Our work together to have a better growth globally on GDP, a 3% growth expected or projected for the current financial year. We have the same potential to realize that’s why we forecast a 3% economic growth at least for the current financial year which is basically the same level that you enjoy in the last financial year. We have a sound macro-economy here, macro-economic fundamental in terms of financial liquidity in the bank and the soundness of our bank system they are there for us for the expansion of the private sector and also for the other opportunities in our country here.”
In terms of other economic issues such as inflation, Tonga is doing well in terms of the increase in CPI which is less than 1%.
“We also see that the inflation is very very low. In fact it has been less than 1%. In some years you have experienced deflation so therefore the Government, we are confident to say we have sufficient resources and I think that we are able to sustain with your help that our operational budget and also at the same time to improve our capacity in terms of increase in investment in terms of infrastructure and also other capabilities to improve, enhance and extend our capacity of the country and our economy to do better and to do more in the future.’
“So with that kind of environment we are confident we are able to achieve our economic target for this year,” Dr Eke said.
”So as other situation improves of education and health and also other areas we see there are challenges there but it should not defer us but with your assistance we should be able to improve that.”