Econ­o­mist Dr In­dera Sage­wan has once again made the call for the Gov­ern­ment to place greater em­pha­sis on di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my in the up­com­ing 2023/2024 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

“The bud­get needs to re­al­ly pri­ori­tise the is­sue of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and job cre­ation; sus­tain­able job cre­ation, not hand­outs, not through trans­fers and sub­si­dies, but through en­cour­ag­ing putting more mon­ey in­to ar­eas that can en­cour­age pro­duc­tive sec­tors to ex­pand and grow and cre­ate sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment and the gov­ern­ment should use the fis­cal tool that is avail­able through the bud­get in or­der to achieve this ob­jec­tive,” said Sage­wan in a phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

She said of­ten there were in­cen­tives placed in the bud­get which of­ten could not be re­deemed by the wider pub­lic due to nu­mer­ous hur­dles.

She con­tin­ued, “It is it is one thing for the gov­ern­ment to put in­cen­tives in place for the con­struc­tion of hous­es, for ex­am­ple. But then it does very lit­tle to deal with the bu­reau­cra­cy that is in­volved in it. In get­ting you and all the per­mits that you re­quire and the ap­provals that you need in or­der to build the hous­es so that it amounts there­fore to on­ly an in­cen­tive, a growth in­cen­tive on pa­per.”

She added that food pro­duc­tion should be a key fo­cus as well as in­creased mar­ket­ing of tourism.

“I would like to see a larg­er al­lo­ca­tion to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, for the pur­pose of putting mon­ey di­rect­ly in the hands of those who can trans­form the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor from a break back type ap­proach to more tech­nol­o­gy dri­ven agri­cul­ture. So I would like to see that I would say like to see the area of tourism, get more re­sources in ar­eas of prod­uct de­vel­op­ment and mar­ket­ing so that we can grow that par­tic­u­lar sec­tor,” she said.