The Guadalcanal provincial premier Francis Sade says the Guadalcanal provincial government needs to increase its revenue base.
Mr Sade said this during the debate of the Guadalcanal Province Appropriation Bill 2019/2020 on the floor of Assembly, Wednesday.
He highlighted that most of the revenues collected by the province came from the foreign companies operating in the province and the province needs to empower its people in order to be able to contribute economically to increase its revenue base.
“Currently the unemployment rate inside the province is very high but we have so much potential that needs to be tapped and developed.
“This is because of less economic opportunities created for the people to participate in the local economy,” he said.
He said providing economic opportunities is part of the provincial government’s 100 days plans which will be launched in August where the executive will look at a lot of reform work to address these very important fundamental issues especially in terms of finance and administration.
He said that the moment the province only collect less than 20% of its revenues so it needs to capture all its revenues.
He added that there are a lot of other development activities going on in the province that must be taken into consideration whether it’s sustainable to the future of the province as to how much benefit from it comes back to the people.
“We need to legislate the benefits of those investment activities to our people.
“We need to realize the opportunities available and we need to work together to prepare a bright future for our province.
“We must control and discipline on the spending of the provincial budget, improve good monitoring and continue to evaluate the performance our performance,” said Mr Sade.
By BRYAN LUVENA
