The Central Bank of Samoa (English: Central Bank of Samoa, referred to as CBS) is the central bank of the Independent State of Samoa. It was established in 1984 and is headquartered in the capital Apia. It is mainly responsible for the issuance management of Samoa's national currency, Samoa Tala, bank interest rate regulation, and commercial bank supervision.

History

Before Samoa became independent in 1962, the people in Samoa used the British pound issued by the Bank of New Zealand as the currency in circulation. After independence, the new currency began to be issued by the Bank of Western Samoa, a commercial bank partially funded by the national government. The bank is also responsible for the management of the national currency and foreign exchange. By the early 1970s, the government wanted to have more orderly control over currency issuance, so a central banking institution was needed to handle these matters. The Monetary Board of Western Samoa Act of 1974 was enacted soon after, and the following year successfully established the Monetary Board of Western Samoa. Later, as Samoa developed domestically, the government began to hope that it could directly issue its own national currency. By the early 1980s, the Samoan economy was experiencing great difficulties. Inflation was approaching 30%, commercial bank interest rates were extremely high, foreign exchange reserves were almost exhausted, and the budget was running large deficits. At this time, the government realized that the country urgently needed a more independent agency to manage monetary policy. So in 1984, the government passed the Central Bank of Samoa Act to establish the Central Bank of Samoa, which took over the functions of the former Monetary Commission and began to assume the functions of implementing monetary policy. Soon after, the Financial Institutions Group Act 1996 was issued, which added the functions of licensing the Financial Institutions Group and supervising commercial banks to the Central Bank. The Money Laundering Act 2000 gave the Central Bank powers to prevent money laundering crimes. The Insurance Act 2007 was issued to increase its powers to supervise insurance institutions.

Headquarters, Apia, Samoa Coordinates 13.830136 ° S 171.767846 ° W Established 1984 Governor AINU-ENARI (appointed August 2011) Central Bank, Samoa Currency Samoa Tala WST (ISO 4217) Reserve 170 million USD (as of December 31, 2013) Bank Rate 9.46% Reserve Interest 2.63% Formerly Monetary Board of Western Samoa (1975-1984) Website www.cbs.gov.ws