![[REMARKS] Opening remarks by the Chair of the 2025 Forum Trade Ministers Meeting, Honourable Kapelieli Lanumata](https://forumsec.org/sites/default/files/2025-07/0R5A7324.JPG "[REMARKS] Opening remarks by the Chair of the 2025 Forum Trade Ministers Meeting, Honourable Kapelieli Lanumata")
Opening remarks delivered by the Chair of the 2025 Forum Trade Ministers Meeting, Honourable Kapelieli Lanumata, Minister for Trade and Economic Development - Tonga.
18 July 2025
Honourable Deputy Prime Minister
Honourable Ministers
Secretary General Baron Waqa
Members of the Diplomatic Corps
Distinguished representatives of the Forum’s Development Partners, Technical Agencies, and CROP Agencies
Distinguished Delegates, ladies and gentlemen,
Malo e lelei and warm Pacific greetings to you all. It is a privilege and honour to welcome you to the 2025 Forum Trade Ministers Meeting, held at your Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat. I also extend our sincere appreciation to the Government and people of Fiji for their generosity and warmth in welcoming us to your beautiful shores once again.
Colleagues, we convene during a period of considerable global and regional uncertainty. The WTO reports that global trade growth plummeted from 2.7% in 2022 to just 0.8% in 2023. Prolonged tariff tensions between major economies particularly the US and China, alongside the ongoing war in Ukraine and ongoing instability in the Middle East, continue to drive up global shipping costs, insurance premiums, and food and fuel prices. These global shocks land squarely at our doorsteps, disrupting supply chains and magnifying inflation across Forum Island Countries.
In our region, we are simultaneously battling rising climate risks, deep structural vulnerabilities, and a persistent health crisis. Climate-induced disasters cost our economies over USD 1.2 billion in 2023. Meanwhile, NCDs remain the leading cause of mortality, reducing workforce productivity and burdening our national health systems. These challenges are compounded by imported inflation, high unemployment, and rising debt. Our average unemployment rate exceeds 15% in some countries, and the Pacific’s average debt-to-GDP ratio stands above 45%. For many families, the cost of living continues to rise faster than income.
According to the latest ADB Pacific Economic Monitor, Pacific Island Countries are forecast to grow by 3.3% in 2025 compared to 4.5% in the Caribbean, 5.1% in sub-Saharan Africa, and over 6% across developing Asia. These figures highlight the urgency for economic reforms and targeted investment in trade, infrastructure, and workforce development.
This is why our Forum Trade Ministers Meetings must be seen not just as a biennial event, but as a strategic forum to shape coordinated regional responses. Trade and economic policy cannot be divorced from broader development priorities. We must embed trade into national recovery plans and ensure it supports inclusive, climate-resilient, and private-sector-led growth.
I would like to commend the Secretary General and Forum Member States for driving renewed momentum under the Pacific Aid-for-Trade Strategy 2020–2025. Through this Strategy, we have seen concrete achievements on trade policy reforms in our Forum Island Countries, e-commerce development and tailored support rendered to MSMEs across the Blue Pacific. These outcomes reaffirm the power of regionalism when coupled with action-oriented implementation.
One area where our unity is crucial is labour mobility. We welcome the ongoing development of the Pacific Labour Mobility Principles, which is a critical step toward a coherent regional approach that balances the undeniable economic opportunities of overseas employment with the pressing need to invest in our domestic labour markets. If well-coordinated, labour mobility can uplift families and communities while building skills and reinvesting in local industries. But this requires policy coherence, safeguards for vulnerable workers, and proactive reintegration strategies.
The Pacific Roadmap for Economic Development (PRED) continues to serve as our regional compass. We must now expand its operational focus to include cost-of-living mitigation, regional employment generation and deeper trade-related investment promotion. These priorities must be supported by strengthened data systems, regional value chain development and digitisation to lower transaction costs.
Let us also remember our collective strength in numbers and solidarity. As a region, we must continue to push for fairer global trade rules, particularly around special and differential treatment, fisheries subsidies and digital trade governance, while also driving transformative change at home. This will require the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to implement much needed structural reforms so that it can regain its relevance and credibility in enforcing a rules-based multilateral trading system that offers our Pacific Islands Forum Member States an equal vote and seat at the negotiating table.
The global developments indicating a move away from multilateralism carries several risks in undermining our collective interests, It also creates a turbulent global trading environment that builds walls, and not the bridges we need for shared and mutual success. We cannot afford to be reactive; we must be bold, value-driven, and relentlessly Pacific in our pursuit of prosperity.
As Chair of your meeting, I encourage us to use our meeting to catalyse concrete actions through partnerships, pilot initiatives, and cross-border reforms that deliver tangible and actionable results for our Pacific people. The work we do here can, and must set the tone for stronger coordination across national and regional levels throughout 2025 and beyond.
Thank you Honourable Ministers and Heads of Delegation for your continued leadership, and for your commitment and shared vision for a resilient and prosperous Blue Pacific Continent. I look forward to our deliberations and outcomes of our meeting.
Malo ‘aupito.
[ENDS]
