The Employment Relations Amendment Bill No. 27 of 2025 will increase business costs and introduce criminal liabilities for procedural and administrative errors, RB Patel has warned.<\/p>\n
In the company\u2019s 2026 annual report, chairman Jitoko Tikolevu raised concerns about the proposed legislation, saying businesses were already struggling with rising wages, declining consumer confidence and increasing government regulation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe recent ERA Amendment Bill No. 27 of 2025 is a case in point which highlights the continuing increase in the cost of doing business together with greater regulation,\u201d Mr Tikolevu said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Bill introduces onerous provisions that will increase costs to business together with introduction of criminal liabilities and offences of procedural and administrative errors.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said wage rates under the wages regulations had increased by as much as 87 per cent since 2022, placing additional pressure on employers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese increases have had and continue to have a significant impact on businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Tikolevu said Fiji\u2019s retail sector was operating in an increasingly difficult economic environment, with falling consumer confidence and demand affecting business performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cMarket conditions put the retail sector under extreme pressure during the latest year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur financial results were impacted by what was an ongoing decline in economic conditions, and hence consumer confidence and demand.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also questioned the level of regulation facing the industry, claiming Fiji had more supermarkets per capita than Australia, New Zealand and almost every other country.<\/p>\n
Despite the difficult trading conditions, the company recorded a 10.2 per cent increase in after-tax profit to $13.27 million for the 2026 financial year, compared with $12.05 million the previous year.<\/p>\n
Total income increased by 2.9 per cent to $196.15 million, while operating profit rose marginally by 0.6 per cent to $18.03 million.<\/p>\n
The company maintained dividends at 5.5 cents per share, while earnings per share increased to 8.8 cents.<\/p>\n
Looking ahead, Mr Tikolevu warned that the 2026\/27 financial year could bring further uncertainty because of global political disruptions and domestic economic pressures.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s certainly nothing to indicate that the financial year of 2026\/27 is going to be any less challenging,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
However, he said the company would continue investing in its workforce, products and services while remaining hopeful of a gradual improvement in trading conditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Employment Relations Amendment Bill No. 27 of 2025 will increase business costs and introduce criminal liabilities for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":889191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[28,134],"class_list":["post-889190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jobs","tag-business","tag-jobs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}