On 17 September 2024, Fiji Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Cooperatives Manoa Kamikamica, launched the country’s National Development Plan (NDP) for 2025-2029 and Vision 2050. The Deputy Prime Minister launched the Plan on behalf of the Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and said that the Plan represents the culmination of months of tireless dedication, collaboration, and vision and is a testament to the country’s collective commitment to shaping a future that is defined by progress, prosperity, and opportunity for all.
NDP entails 3 pillars encompassing 7 seven focus areas. The NDP also presents 5 X-Factors within the Focus Areas. Pillar 1 is Economic Resilience with five focus areas. The first focus area is building microeconomic confidence and stability by narrowing the trade deficit in the balance of payments, achieve price stability through a prudent monetary and fiscal policy, and improve the fiscal position through a more judicious expenditure strategy that is consistent with revenue and debt strategy. The second focus area is fostering Fiji’s international and regional relations. The third focus area calls for sustainable management of the country’s natural resources through management of forest resources, improving access to land and sustainable development of groundwater resources.
The fourth focus under Pillar 1 calls for catalysing economic growth and diversifying the economy. Under this, the NDP will promote greater private sector participation across all sectors to become the driver of economic growth. This focus area also calls for giving special attention to the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to increase their contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) through initiatives to improve access to finance, capacity building and transition of more businesses to formal economy. NDP also lists three X-factors under the fourth focus area namely promoting private sector participation in the economy and rationalising the role of government, promoting Research and Development and innovation (RDI) and technology adoption. Under Pillar 1, NDP targets a 4-5% annual growth rate, a 20% investment to GDP, and 21% contribution of manufacturing to GDP.
Pillar 2 of the NDP is People Empowerment, the first focus area (Focus Area 5) under this pillar is uplifting social well-being. The NDP takes a holistic approach towards uplifting the social wellbeing of the people which will include addressing poverty, education, healthcare, affordable housing, urban development, empowering women, and the protection of children and people with disability. Poverty alleviation will be an important agenda under the NDP where it reaffirms the Government’s commitment to reduce the incidence of poverty to 18% by 2030. The NDP pays special attention to marginalised communities such as women, children, youth and people with disabilities. The X-factor under this focus calls for intensifying rural and outer island transformation. NDP will intensify efforts and will allocate greater resources for rural and outer island development to ensure that there is balanced development across all regions and to bridge the gap between the rural and outer island, and urban areas. Measures will be taken to improve connectivity and accessibility through better roads and jetties and provide basic infrastructure including bridges, seawalls, electricity, water, drainage, transportation and communication. The next focus area (Focus Area 6) under Pillar 2 is developing public infrastructure, protecting public environment and addressing climate change. The X factor under this pillar is strengthening resilience against the impacts of natural disasters and climate change. The NDP places critical importance and emphasis on strengthening resilience to natural disasters and climate change and introduces a comprehensive policy and strategy framework with various innovative approaches. Among them are mainstreaming climate resilience and disaster risk reduction measures in development planning including in infrastructure, spatial and sector planning. There will also be enforcement of stricter compliance to related standards and codes. This pillar focuses on social metrics like poverty incidence, net enrolment rates for early childhood education, access to electricity and clean water, and rural development through new sealed roads and electricity access. The table includes targets for these indicators, such as achieving 95% of adults owning bank accounts and reducing unemployment to 3.8%.
Pillar 3 of NDP is Good Governance. The focus area (Focus Area 7) under this pillar is ‘Committing to Governance, Institutional and State-Owned Entity Reforms. The X factor under this pillar is commitment to implementation and accountability. The Good Governance pillar is concerned with corruption perception and civil servant numbers, aiming to achieve better governance with a corruption perception index (CPI) target of 50 and increasing civil servants to 25,000.
The NDP also envelops within itself Vision 2050, a 25-year long-term vision for Fiji. The vision outlines the long-term development goals based on the aspirations of the people on how they see themselves and picture Fiji in 25 years.
