FIJI’S tourism industry remained largely unscathed from the impact of Tropical Depression 04F in December last year, the Reserve Bank of Fiji said.
In its 2017 January Economic Review released last Friday, the central bank stated that tourist arrivals in 2016 reached a record of 792,320 visitors.
Tourism minister Faiyaz Koya had earlier attributed the growth in visitor arrivals to New Zealand, China and the rest of the Asian markets.
RBF reported that tourist arrivals were dominated by visitors from New Zealand and China by 5.0 per cent.
This year, however, looks promising for the industry with several resorts and hotels expected to open this year which will augur well with goals to achieve the target of one million tourist arrivals by 2020.
With the modest performance of Fiji’s external sector, foreign reserves levels remained adequate, currently around $1,925.0 million, which is sufficient enough to cover 5.1 months of retained imports of goods and non-factor services.
This is an increase compared with $1,921.4m reported in the RBF December Economic Review last year.
Meanwhile, the central bank noted mixed performances domestically with other sectors.
The Industrial Production Index (IPI) for mining and quarrying rose by 79.6 per cent in the third quarter of last year.
This, RBF said, was in line with the strong annual gold production of 13.7 per cent in 2016.
And in contrast, the aggregate IPI contracted annually (-7.3 per cent) in the September 2016 quarter as the impact of Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston.
This impacted the sugar, non-alcoholic drinks and cigarettes category; and frozen poultry, meat and canned fish indices.
An annual decline in the manufacture of wood-related products index with the contraction in the timber industry output was noted throughout last year.
