Fiji’s economy continues to show encouraging signs, with record July visitor arrivals, strong remittance inflows and resilient investment activity supporting the country’s growth outlook, says Reserve Bank of Fiji Governor and Board Chairman Ariff Ali.
Mr Ali said visitor arrivals reached 105,791 in July, the highest ever recorded for the month and 6.5 per cent above July 2025.
The result lifted cumulative visitor growth to 4.3 per cent for the first seven months of 2026.
“Economic activity remains encouraging,” Mr Ali said in a statement.
He said strong tourism activity, combined with a 26.3 per cent increase in remittance inflows during the first six months of the year, continued to support household consumption.
Investment also remained resilient, supported by increased lending and construction activity.
“Against this backdrop, the outlook for economic growth in 2026 remains positive, with recent indicators suggesting some potential for growth to be stronger than currently anticipated,” Mr Ali said.
Financial conditions remained supportive, with banking system liquidity at around $2 billion as of August 26 and private sector credit growing by 14.6 per cent in July.
However, Mr Ali warned that the economy continued to face significant risks from inflation, election-related uncertainty, social and security concerns, geopolitical tensions and energy market volatility.
Headline inflation stood at 5.7 per cent in July, down slightly from 6.1 per cent in June but substantially higher than the negative 1.5 per cent recorded a year earlier.
Higher fuel, gas and kerosene prices accounted for about 2.8 percentage points of July’s inflation.
Inflation is expected to remain elevated in coming months as higher global fuel prices and freight costs flow through to domestic prices.
Foreign reserves stood at $3.9 billion as of August 27, sufficient to cover 5.5 months of retained imports.
Mr Ali said reserves were being supported by government external loan drawdowns, strong tourism receipts and remittance inflows and were expected to remain adequate over the medium term.
