PM Matthew Wale says reforms will end elite capture and build a stronger, middle-income Solomon Islands economy
PRIME Minister Hon. Matthew Wale says a small and narrow economy is not the destiny of Solomon Islands, but the result of decisions made and avoided over many years.
Responding to the Speech of the Throne in Parliament this week, the Prime Minister said the country’s current economic structure is the accumulated outcome of choices spanning more than four decades.
“What choices have made, choices can unmake. I have named the disease before, and I name it again: elite capture, the quiet arrangement by which the wealth of this nation is harvested by a narrow few while the ordinary family carries the cost,” he said.
Prime Minister Wale stressed that the reforms being pursued by the GREAT Coalition Government are deliberately aimed at confronting and dismantling this long-standing imbalance.
He said the Government’s policies reflect the collective voice of the people drawn from villages, markets, Churches and expressed through the ballot box.
“Our ambition is clear: that within the next 20 to 30 years, Solomon Islands will stand among the middle-income countries of the world, not by the charity of others, but through the disciplined harvest of our own God-given wealth,” he said.
The Prime Minister emphasised that progress must be measured by its impact on ordinary citizens.
“This transformation will be judged by whether it reaches the ordinary family, the mother at the market, the fishermen and farmers in our provinces, and the young graduate walking the streets of Honiara with a certificate but no job. That is the standard against which the people will judge us all,” he said.
Prime Minister Wale highlighted the Government’s commitment to fundamentally shift the country’s economic model.
He said this requires a deliberate reorientation of the machinery of Government moving away from an outdated system where resources are exported raw while communities see little benefit.
“We are shifting to a model where the harvest of our land and seas is processed by Solomon Islander hands, on Solomon Islands soil, for Solomon Islander families,” he said.
SOURCE:// Office of Prime Minister Press Release
