P.M. defends loans

Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi has defended his government’s insistence on taking out loans from all over the world, saying such a trend is the “reality of our time.”

In fact without loans, Tuilaepa said Samoa would not be where it is today in terms of development.

The Prime Minister made the point during an interview released by the Office of the Press Secretariat during the weekend. It follows the tabling of the budget last week, which showed a deficit of $93million to be financed by soft loans.

“We must remember that without loans we wouldn't be enjoying massively improved infrastructure and social services such as our new hospital at Motootua and new and refurbished rural hospitals,” Tuilaepa is quoted as saying.

“Our children wouldn't have new and better school buildings, our communities wouldn't have better roads, safer bridges and more.

“These are taken for granted because they are there, but just imagine what Samoa's situation would be like without these facilities. We'd be stuck as an underdeveloped nation with our future generations migrating overseas for better schooling and health services.”

The Prime Minister used the state-of-the-art hospital at Moto’otua as an example.

“At the new hospital, we have state-of-theart facilities to treat all those patients who stubbornly continue buying soft drinks, beer and tobacco,” he said.

“So instead of sending them overseas for treatment, we are focusing on taking care of them in Samoa.

“The reduced overseas medical treatment budget means we can bring the experts to us to treat our people here, using our equipment in our high-tech facilities. This saves us millions of tala which can be redirected to other projects that need attention.”

According to the Prime Minister, a responsible government identifies the needs of the public and puts those needs first.

“Samoa spends $10,000,000 yearly for treatment of our patients in New Zealand,” he said.

“I am told that both Tonga and Fiji spend only $100,000 to send their patients for treatment in New Zealand. In the new financial year we have cut down the budget for overseas treatment and allow our own doctors to start getting busy.”

Tuilaepa also dismissed criticisms of his government over the unemployment figures.

“There was a 0.2% reduction in employment figures in 2014 compared to 2013. That's less than a quarter of a percent. Are you good at maths?” he laughed.

“It's actually not as alarming as some might think. It's simply because of Yazaki being scaled-down and in fact we haven't included the employment opportunities through the Seasonal Workers scheme. If we included those it will be a super increase.”

The Prime Minister then reminded that his government is working hard to create employment through attracting foreign investment opportunities. He pointed to the recent opening of the Apia Deep Fishing Company at Matautu. And there is more.

“We're also working with Bumble Bee to establish a presence here, which will hopefully provide more than 300 jobs for our people and the numerous ongoing public works - which engaged our major roads and buildings contractors - generate employment opportunities for our people,” he said.

“Further growth in government building projects means more jobs for the private sector.

So the government isn't resting on our laurels.

We're always pursuing opportunities for private sector development because that means one thing - more jobs for our people.”