Latest available indicators on the tourism sector and private remittances, with information sourced from the Central Bank, Samoa Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry for Revenue.

Visitor Arrivals
As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to afflict people and economies all over the world, Samoa’s international borders have remained closed for over five months, only allowing only intermittent repatriation flights for returning residents. In this regard, tourist arrivals and earnings remained at zero for the month of August.
On the other hand, tourism price index fell sharply by 18.7 percent over the year as a result of the significant reduction in the ‘Accommodation’ sub index as most hotel accommodations have temporarily closed or have significantly reduced their standard room prices.
Private Remittances
Total private remittances improved by 15.9 percent (or $7.5 million) to $54.5 million when compared to the same month last year but recorded a decrease of 0.6 percent (or $0.9 million) over the previous month.
Largely underpinning this overall increase over the year was higher transfers from Australia (up $5.1 million), American Samoa and New Zealand (both up by $1.9 million) and Others (up $0.2 million) respectively. In terms of recipients, ‘Family and Households’ expanded by $12.8 million.
August 2020
Total inflow of private remittances in the first two months of 2020/21 recorded an increase of 8.8 percent (or $8.9 million) to $109.4 million over the same month last year.
Accounting for this increase were gains in transfers from Australia (up $11.0 million), New Zealand (up $4.3 million) and American Samoa (up $3.5 million). Partially contributing to the increase of private remittances were depreciations of 0.7 percent and 0.3 percent of the Samoan tala against both the US dollar and NZ dollar in that order.
The monthly share of remittances inflows received through Money Transfer Operators (MTO’s) increased to 90.0 percent from 84.7 percent in August 2019 while those received directly through commercial banks fell to 10.0 percent from 15.3 percent.
The average monthly cost of sending NZD$200.00 to Samoa shrank to 10.72 percent from 11.29 percent in August 2019 while the average cost of sending AUD$200.00 increased to 8.70 percent from 8.49 percent over the year.
