Minister for Economy Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum says as at July 2020, the total value of loans provided in repayment relief to individuals and businesses by licensed financial institutions stood at $3 billion.
This relief has been provided to 17,194 customers.
Sayed-Khaiyum highlighted this when asked by the Assistant Minister for Itaukei Affairs, Selai Adimaitoga to provide an update on the repayment relief provided so far by the Financial Institutions.
He says as at June this year the total value of loans provided in repayment relief was $3.6 billion to 18,422 customers.
Sayed-Khaiyum says this reflects a notable number of 1,228 businesses and individuals who no longer need the relief in their repayment as their cash flow and income has improved.
He says this includes the relief packages offered by commercial banks, licensed credit institutions and Fiji Development Bank. The Minister says from April to July this year there was $668 million given out by financial institutions in new lending.
He says the financial institutions are foregoing around $40.3 million in loan repayments a month.
Sayed-Khaiyum says the current liquidity stands at $1.077 billion and foreign reserves at $2.3 billion which is equivalent of about 8.7 months of retained imports.
He says with this injection of liquidity and the foreign reserves going higher, they have seen that the yields of government securities and bonds have come down and this means they have to pay less interest rates.
Sayed-Khaiyum says the Reserve Bank of Fiji is regularly conducting stress tests to forecast what would be the expected level of loss.
