SUVA (Fiji Times/Pacnews) — The tourism industry is critical for Fiji’s recovery given the dominance of the industry throughout the wider economy and because it accounts of about 40% of the country’s gross domestic product or GDP, says Economy Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.
Speaking in Parliament on Monday last week, he said Fiji’s 12.4% GDP growth projection was predicated on the assumption that visitor arrivals would reach around 55% of pre-pandemic arrivals this year.
“This revised forecast is upward biased, meaning essentially the actual GDP growth for 2022 could be much higher than what is projected,” Sayed-Khaiyum said.
“That is because we are likely to surpass our visitor arrivals target for the year with the current trajectory of tourism inflows is maintained.”
Sayed-Khaiyum said visitor arrivals in July 2022 stood at 78,638 which was 81.6% of July 2019 levels and total cumulative arrivals from January to July 2022 was 284,167 — which was 56.4% of arrivals for the same period in 2019.
Sayed-Khaiyum said Australia’s visitor arrivals in July this year was 37,005 — which has already surpassed 2019 July levels which is 36,799 (100.6% higher).
He said similarly, New Zealand arrivals were 90.3% of July 2019 levels while U.S. arrivals were 93.6%.
