According to an assessment by the IMF Mission that visited Samoa earlier this month, about a quarter of the tourism sector’s capacity was destroyed by the tsunami. Beyond tourism, the IMF Mission noted that the widespread damage to physical infrastructure implies that other sectors such as commerce, transport, and communication have also been directly affected. In the seven months to end January 2010, tourist arrivals increased. On the surface, any increase is good news. However, a significant number of the visitors were volunteers and overseas personnel who came to assist with the tsunami emergency and recovery efforts. Many of these people stayed in makeshift camps in the tsunami affected areas, resulting in a reduction in paid hotel accommodation. This, combined with a general decline in the other categories of tourist expenditures, saw total tourism earnings in the period under review fall 5 percent to $ million. Private remittances, which is one of the major sources of income for our people, was also affected by the recession and tsunami. In the early months of the current financial year, private remittances were well on their way down, due to the global recession. However, the huge inflows following the tsunami outweighed the earlier reductions resulting in an overall increase to $ million, in the first 7 months to end January. 2  BIS Review 49/2010  Exports rose slightly in the period under review, reflecting increases in exports of fish, coconut oil, copra meal, nonu fruit and bottled water.
And, in line with this objective, foreign investments abroad by residents have been discouraged, to ensure that there are sufficient funds available for domestic investments. This stance of monetary policy will be reviewed when Government’s Budget for 2010/11 is finalized in June this year. Now let me say something briefly about interest rates. BIS Review 49/2010  3  4. Interest rates and bank fees  Ladies and Gentlemen, in the past twelve months or so, there has been much criticism by the private sector and the public at large of our relatively high interest rate environment. This debate has been ongoing since the outbreak of the global recession two years ago. Reflecting the continued easing of monetary policy, the Central Bank’s official interest rates have declined steeply to record low levels. Consequently, the commercial banks’ deposit rates have also fallen sharply. In the event, the commercial banks’ weighted average lending rate has declined to 10.7 percent in January this year, from 12.5 percent in March 2008. The commercial banks have undertaken to effect further reductions in their lending rates in the near future. These further reductions reflect the maturity of several long term wholesale deposits which have been reinvested at lower rates. In the medium to long term, the Central Bank is aiming at reducing the interest rates in Samoa, to be closer to those of our major trading partners (such as Fiji).