An independent economist in Fiji says his estimate on the cost of four coups on the economy to be around 10 billion Fiji dollars, is a moderate take.
Dr Wadan Narsey says while every coup leader claimed to be able to return the economy to a healthy growth, that hasn't been the case.
Dr Narsey calculated the cost of each coup on the growth of the economy when it was thriving prior to the first coup in 1987.
"We've never ever gotten back to the old trend path, whether it was tourist arrivals or whether it was the GDP in general. So if you look at what we could have had, even growing at a moderately 2.8 percent growth, which was the case between 1970 and 1986, that's moderate. So you just roughly estimate the gap between what could have been and what has been it really does work out between 9 and 10 billion dollars."
Fiji economist, Dr Wadan Narsey.
Fiji had coups in 1987,2000, 2001 and 2006.
