Director of Commerce Keniseli Lafaele explained at Friday’s cabinet meeting what the numbers mean in the estimates of Gross Domestic Product for American Samoa for the year 2014.
The estimates, released by the Bureau for Economic Analysis last week, show that real GDP increased 1.6%, culminating in the first upward trend for American Samoa since 2012.
Before that the territory recorded negative growth of -4.3 in 2012 and -3.0 in 2013.
Consumer spending grew 4.8%, the first time there’s been positive growth in consumer spending in the territory since 2004.
Private investment also went up mainly due to the cannery spending, the new canning and the new cold storage that the Tri Marine invested in as well as capital spending by StarKist Samoa.
Lafaele said that’s a 10.8% increase there, a significant change compared to the 8.6% from last year.
