Samoa Court-rule interest on judgment debts

What this value means

THIS IS A COURT-RULE RATE, NOT A STATUTORY ONE. No Samoan Act prescribes an interest rate; the 8% figure lives in rule 126 of the Supreme Court (Civil Procedure) Rules 1980, subordinate legislation made by the Head of State. It can therefore be changed without an Act of Parliament: the Rules were made on the advice of the Prime Minister with the concurrence of the Rules Committee under s. 40 of the Judicature Ordinance 1961, and since the Judicature Act 2020 came into force on 5 January 2021 the power to make rules for the practice and procedure of the Supreme Court sits with the Head of State acting on the advice of the Judicial Service Commission (s. 9). The 2020 Act repealed the 1961 Ordinance but s. 26(5) continues every rule made under it, so rule 126 survives unchanged. THE COURT CANNOT DISPLACE IT: unlike the equivalent defaults in neighbouring jurisdictions, rule 126 carries no 'unless the Court otherwise orders' qualification — it says every qualifying judgment debt 'shall carry' interest at 8%. THRESHOLD: the rule bites only on a judgment debt IN EXCESS OF $200 (Samoan tala). A judgment at or below that figure carries no interest under the rule. SCOPE — POST-JUDGMENT ONLY: interest runs from the time judgment is given until the judgment is satisfied, and is leviable under any writ of execution upon the judgment. Simple interest; the rule provides for no compounding. NO PRE-JUDGMENT RATE AND NO LATE-PAYMENT REGIME: nothing in Samoan law gives a creditor default interest on an unpaid invoice outside contract. The Rules fix no rate for the period before judgment, the Judicature Act 2020 contains no interest provision (nor did the Judicature Ordinance 1961), and s. 53 of the Sale of Goods Act 1975 only preserves a right to recover interest 'in any case where by law interest ... may be recoverable' without naming a rate. Interest before judgment is therefore a matter of the contract or of the Court's award in the individual case. NO INTEREST ACT: the 2025 Consolidation of Laws of Samoa, current to 31 December 2025, runs alphabetically from the Insurance Act 2007 straight to the Intellectual Property Act 2011, with nothing in between on interest. CONTRACTUAL INTEREST IS CAPPED, NOT CREATED: the Penalty Interest Rates Act 1998 is a ceiling, not an entitlement. Section 5(1) makes a contractual penalty-interest provision 'unenforceable to the extent that the rate of penalty interest under the contract exceeds 14% a year or any other figure prescribed by regulations'. It binds the State, applies retrospectively to all contracts entered into in Samoa, and does not apply to a contract whose sole purpose is the lending of money or to a contract on which a Court has made a final determination; s. 4 preserves the common-law rule striking down penalty clauses. Do not read 14% as a rate a creditor may charge by default — it is the maximum a contract may stipulate. LOWER COURTS: the 8% is a Supreme Court figure. The District Courts Act 2016 contains no interest provision, and the Magistrates' Courts Rules 1971 — the lower-court rules carried forward under s. 89(3) of that Act — fix no judgment-interest rate, so interest on a District Court money judgment must be taken from the order itself. DRAFTING TRAP IN THE RULES: Form 46 (writ of sale), prescribed under rule 172 of the same Rules, still recites interest 'at the rate of $6 for every $100 by the year' — 6%, a figure the operative rule no longer supports. Rule 126 governs; read the writ before relying on the number printed on it. JUDICIALLY APPLIED: the Supreme Court has enforced rule 126 in these terms, holding that 'every judgment for an amount exceeding $200 carries interest at 8% p.a from the date of the judgment until the date of satisfaction' (Eteuati v The Pacific Forum Line [1998] WSSC 29). No civil/commercial split and no consumer variant.

Get it programmatically

curl https://ausref.dev/v1/ws/statutory-interest
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://ausref.dev/v1/ws/statutory-interest/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://ausref.dev/provenance/ws/statutory-interest

Other Samoa series: policy interest rate · VAGST standard rate (Value Added Goods and Services Tax) · VAGST registration threshold · National minimum wage (hourly) · Public holidays · CPI inflation (year-on-year) · Company income tax rate · Withholding tax rates · Personal income tax rates · Statutory social-insurance contributions

The same figure elsewhere: Solomon Islands · Tonga · Vanuatu · Australia · Fiji · all 8