Fiji: Sustainable and Resilient Recovery Program for Fiji

approved

The program will be co-financed with Asian Development Bank (ADB) to provide a single-tranche policy-based loan (PBL) to GOF. The program comprises three reform areas: (i) public financial management for fiscal resilience and debt sustainability, (ii) public policy for community resilience, and (iii) enabling environment for resilient private sector recovery. The program builds on and complements reforms under the AIIB and ADB supported Sustained Private Sector-Led Growth Reform Program in 2020, while responding to policy challenges intensified by the pandemic. After its economy's contraction by an unprecedented 17.2% in 2020, the economy is expected to have further declined by 4.1% in 2021 because of the local COVID-19 outbreak. The program will help create fiscal space to implement a new medium-term reform program that is expected to be finalized in 2022, integrating the post-election government's reform priorities after national elections expected in the second half of 2022. The program will support GOF's reforms to systematically mainstream resilience (including climate resilience) into the government's budgeting and decision-making processes, as well as in its medium-term reform agenda.