Possible recovery
THE Reserve Bank of Fiji has forecast for a recovery in 2021 assuming no major natural disaster occurs.
While highlighting this, Reserve Bank of Fiji governor Ariff Ali said the opening of international borders for tourism towards the latter half of next year would be a great boost.
Mr Ali said the latest economic projection for Fiji highlighted a slight improvement to the forecasted contraction in the economy for 2020 from 21.7 per cent to 19.0 per cent.
“This will be the worst recession on record for Fiji, and the last thing the Fijian economy needs right now is to be hit by another natural disaster,” he said.
Speaking at the launch of the Pacific Insurance and Climate Adpatation Programme at the Grand Pacific Hotel in Suva yesterday, Mr Ali said the Fijian Government over the years had funded rehabilitation work post natural disaster in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
“As the frequency and intensity of natural disasters increase, so too is the need for Government
to build on sustainable resilience measures.
“Leading up to and during the COP23, there have been a lot of discussions on climate change, disaster risk reduction and parametric insurance.
“I am therefore very pleased that we have moved a step further than just discussing and planning as we launch the Pacific Insurance and Climate Adaption Programme today.
“This means that we will rely less on re-active measures and focus on an initiative that builds resilience by providing agile and immediate post-disaster financing needs through market led disaster risk financing instruments.
“This program fulfills a long felt need of the Pacific island countries, aims to plug a market gap and address a persistent development challenge by developing, piloting and scaling market-based parametric insurance solutions.
“I wish to also convey my gratitude to the Governments of New Zealand and Australia for their financial support and collaboration with PFIP for this initiative.”