COMMERCIAL banks' lending and time deposit rates fell by 2 and 4 basis points to 7.11 and 2.61 per cent, respectively in line with the high $538 million liquidity in the banking system.
The Reserve Bank of Fiji said both the lending and time deposit rates of licensed credit institutions declined over the review period by 17 and 104 basis points to 11.31 and 3.60 per cent, respectively.
Bilateral movements of the domestic currency against major trading partner currencies were mixed in June.
While the Fiji dollar weakened against the New Zealand (2.2 per cent) and Australian (1.2 per cent) dollars, it strengthened against the Japanese Yen (2.7 per cent), the US dollar (2.2 per cent) and the Euro (1.6 per cent). On an annual basis, the Fiji dollar depreciated against the Yen (5.8 per cent) and the US dollar (4.2 per cent) but appreciated significantly against the Euro (11.1 per cent) and to a lesser extent, against the Australian (1.9 per cent) and New Zealand (0.4 per cent) dollars.
The RBF expects the negative impact of the March floods to have been fully realised in April because of the normalising supply of agricultural items, which was the key driver of the high inflation in April.
Inflation is expected to ease further in the coming months as one-off shocks are expected to fade.
Inflation in June was 4.5 per cent. Foreign reserves were around $1.48 billion, at the end of June, sufficient to cover 4.7 months of retained imports of goods and non-factor services.