Australia, NZ say our tourism to improve

By RACHNA LAL

Data from the Australia Bureau of Statistics and Statistics New Zealand suggests positive visitor arrival turnaround in the coming months from two of our major tourism markets.
The positive indication comes on a backdrop of five per cent decreased visitor arrivals during the first quarter of this year when compared with same period last year.
This has been highlighted in the Reserve Bank of Fiji’s Economic Review for June.
The review further established that short term departures to Fiji from these two traditional source countries for April alone were higher over the year by 30.3 per cent.

Construction activity
Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank noted a significant increase of 30.1 per cent in domestic cement sales in the first four months of the year when compared with same period last year.
Cement sales is a partial indicator for domestic construction activity.

Financial system
The review noted growth in net domestic credit was driven largely by commercial bank lending which accelerated to 13.7 per cent on an annual basis.
“Interest rates in the banking sector continued their downward trajectory over the May review month with outstanding lending and time deposit rates falling to 6.18 percent and 2.13 percent respectively,” it said.
“The savings deposit rate slightly rose to 0.76 per cent.
“Liquidity rose in May by $103.6 million to $585.2 million underpinned by foreign reserves which increased by $136.6 million over the same period.”
Foreign reserves are currently stands at around $1,684.4 million, sufficient to cover 4.8 months of retained imports of goods and non-factor services.