Fiji’s foreign reserves stand comfortable at $3.4 billion, sufficient to cover 6.3 months of retained imports of goods and services.
This was highlighted in the Reserve Bank of Fiji’s January economic review.
The Central Bank says the risk to the outlook remain centred around elevated inflation, with continued rate hikes to bring inflation with manageable levels.
With the Russian-Ukrainian war still on going and China reopening, majority commodity price shocks are still possible.
On a domestic front, RBF has indicated that the current cyclone season could pose a major setback to the Fijian economy.
On external trade, increased domestic demand and higher international prices led to imports growth (59.3%) outpacing that of exports (23.7%) resulting in a widened (89 per cent) trade deficit of $3.5B as of the last quarter of last year (October).
Headline annual inflation cooled to 3.6 per cent in December, undershooting the 5.0 per cent forecast. Food and energy prices continued to dominate the inflation outcome, with two-thirds of the price movement attributed to imported inflation (2.4pp) relative to domestic inflation (1.2pp).
