Fuel prices have plateaued throughout the Pacific, though supply chain “uncertainty” keeps costs high regionwide.
Samoa, Tonga and Fiji have each decreased their fuel price caps for August, though each of them remains higher than before April when the global fuel crisis began.
Fiji has seen a reduction of 36 to 38 NZ cents per litre for diesel, and 28 to 30 cents per litre for petrol. In urban Viti Levu, the diesel price decreased by 13.7 percent.
In Samoa, diesel is down by 13.2 percent to $2.49 tala per litre, and in Tonga, it has fallen to $2.87 per litre.
Samoa’s Minister of Finance said the next scheduled cargo to Samoa will arrive in mid-August.
Other Pacific countries have yet to change their fuel caps, but all either maintained or lowered their caps in July.
According to New Zealand’s Foreign Ministry, Polynesia is almost entirely reliant on fuel from Singapore. Samoa sources directly from there, while Fiji also sources, to a far lesser degree, from Malaysia and South Korea.
From there, Fiji re-exports to Tuvalu, Tonga and the Cook Islands – the latter of which also sources from New Zealand. Tokelau depends on Samoa.
Both the Asian Development Bank and the Australian government have sunk hundreds of millions of dollars in budget support for the Fiji government, a regional fuel distribution hub, over the last three months.
Figures released by Fiji’s Statistics Bureau show that in May, Tuvalu’s fuel spend increased more than five fold – from around $611 to $3.9 million.
The month before, perhaps in anticipation of this spend, Tuvalu had declared a state of emergency, limiting their 10,000 person population to strict power usage limits.
Figures also showed Tonga had spent 112.3 percent more on re-exported fuel from Fiji than the previous month. In April, they had spent 106.5 percent more.
The Cook Islands had spent 152.6 percent more, the month where diesel prices blew up to NZ$4.65 in Rarotonga, and $5.38 in the Northern Group.
