Quality spending on infrastructure investment in Fiji has declined in recent years from a historically strong base, says the World Bank.

The World Bank’s Fiji Public Expenditure Report 2023 says that recent years and the COVID-19 pandemic have resulted in the progressive deterioration of the quality of spending in Fiji in terms of strategic and framework-driven planning and expenditure allocation.

It adds that public investment processes are now poorly rated in an expenditure and financial accountability assessment undertaken by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2020.

The report outlines that Fiji is today experiencing significant challenges in managing, implementing, and executing public infrastructure investment programs.

It suggests that Fiji needs to focus on improving the quality of its public infrastructure spending, not merely cutting spending.

Fiji underspent its original infrastructure project budget in 2020 by 21 percent, potentially signaling an immaturity in budgetary allocation: rather than wholesale cost-cutting, the quality of that spending may be significantly enhanced with the implementation of clear, objective expenditure analysis, identification, and appraisal or assessment frameworks.

Fiji is also said to lack a standard methodology for the maintenance of infrastructure projects once they are completed and does not systematically account for maintenance costs in budgets.

The recommendation is that to prolong the life of assets, Fiji should ensure that it establishes and promotes the use of standard methodologies to determine capital for maintenance projects and that maintenance costs are included in national or sectoral infrastructure plans.