The economic importance of the sugar industry for Fiji

Type Journal Article - Computable General Equilibrium Approaches In Urban And Regional Policy Studies
Title The economic importance of the sugar industry for Fiji
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2006
Page numbers 189-203
URL https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789812707116_0010
Abstract
For over a century, the sugar industry has been perceived as the backbone of the Fijian economy, given its contributions to gross domestic product (GDP) and employment generation. However, due to the non-renewal of land leases and the gradual withdrawal of the preferential prices by the European Union, the industry is on the verge of collapse. We use the Fiji computable general equilibrium model to simulate the economy-wide impact of a 30% reduction in sugar production. Amongst our key results, we find that in the long-run a 30% reduction in sugar production leads to a 2.1% fall in exports, and government expenditure and real consumption fall by 1.9 and 1.6%, respectively. These declines in the aggregate demand components are reflected in a fall of around 1.8% in Fiji's GDP. The negative repercussion of declining economic growth is reflected in a 1.5% decline in real national welfare.

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