UN General Assembly
2022

No country should be placed in a situation of choosing between rebuilding its economy and servicing its debt obligations. The March 2021 report of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) noted that SIDS simply cannot support their SDGs and fund their core needs on their own under the prevailing conditions of economic contraction. Tourism may never return to pre-COVID-19 levels. Aviation services will be slow to recover, and one casualty of the pandemic, in our case, was the recent demise of our national airline, Samoa Airways. Many Pacific Island countries rely on remittances from diasporas and communities. Apart from being an important source of income for families and foreign exchange reserves for Governments, remittances are an important buffer in periods of economic shocks and natural disasters. Yet the cost of sending remittances to the Pacific is over 10 per cent, which is higher than the global average and 7 per cent higher than the target set by the SDGs.