Fiji's Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama announced on Monday the country's performance for the six-month period ending June 2009, explaining that overall, the government's finance was in a comfortable position.

 "The government achieved a fiscal surplus of 0.7 percent of GDP, equivalent to 43.0 million Fiji dollars (21.6 million US dollars) compared to a forecast fiscal deficit of 2.7 percent of GDP," he said.

 For the six-month period, the Fiji government collected 676.7 million Fiji dollars ( 339.2 million US dollars) in revenue, against total expenditure of 633.7 million Fiji dollars (317.7 million US dollars).

This announcement came on the eve that the Commonwealth is expected to make a decision on Fiji whether it would be expelled or not.

Fiji was told in no uncertain terms by the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group to reactivate the President's Political Dialogue Forum or bear the cost of a full suspension from the 53- nation bloc.

However, government spokesman Neumi Leweni said they have heard nothing about Fiji's expulsion on Monday.

Fiji has until Sept. 1 to inform the Commonwealth Secretariat of its decision and to hold elections by October 2010.

Bainimarama said Fiji's expenditures for the first six months this year were below the forecast by 200.5 million Fiji dollars ( 100.5 million US dollars) and attributed this under-performance to low capital spending, as most capital projects were in the early stages of implementation.

 Despite the slow capital spending, the capital utilization rate has improved over the same period last year by 3.0 percent.

 The Fiji government however, expects spending in this critical area to accelerate during the second half of the year.

 A marked improvement was noted in the operating to capital expenditure ratio, reaching a level of 88:12 as opposed to the 2008 half-year ratio of 91:9.

 Bainimarama said this favorable outturn reflected the outcome of recent policies and strategies to help rationalize operating outlays and improve the implementation rate of investment expenditures.

The prime minister also revealed that although collections from taxes were below forecast, total revenue collections surpassed the forecast by around 2.1 million Fiji dollars (1.1 million US dollars) due to higher than expected non-tax receipts.

 Bainimarama said the government would continue efforts to stimulate economic activity through its fiscal policy.

"Fiji's Ministry of Finance will reassess budget-funded programs and projects that have not commenced implementation, with the view of redirecting unspent funds to areas that require additional resources such as infrastructure development, health and public utilities," he said.

In stressing the importance of maintaining fiscal stability, the prime minister reaffirmed that ministries and departments' expenditures will be continually controlled to ensure that resources are utilized efficiently and productively.

Bainimarama said the focus for his government was to reduce wastage, improve productivity, and speed up capital works implementation in line with the strategy to safeguard finances approved by Cabinet earlier this year.

He said that the continued alignment of monetary and fiscal policy was starting to show positive results and was happy with how the market was generally responding as reported by the Governor of the Reserve Bank recently.

 Looking forward, Bainimarama said that more work and effort had to be done in the area of reducing Fiji's reliance on imported food products and fuel, more substitution of imports had to be done and greater effort had to go into developing the exports of Fiji made products and services to regional and global markets.