The Reserve Bank of Fiji has revealed that the trade balance in the first five months of the year improved by 10 percent when compared with the same period last year.

RBF Governor Sada Reddy said personal remittances grew by 15 percent, cumulative to May this year.

However, he reiterated that this is not sufficient to cover the trade gap, with Fiji still being a significant net-importer.

The governor noted that foreign reserves are now at over $700million and commercial bank liquidity has also improved strongly to over $200million.

Reddy said the commercial banks' outstanding lending rate has fallen to 7.96 percent in June from 8.24 percent in March this year.

The RBF governor said as expected, consumer prices have risen in line with the devaluation.

Inflation in June was 2.3 percent and the year-end inflation projection is 9.5 percent for 2009.

But he predicted that inflation will fall to around 2 percent next year.