The Pacific Business Brief tracks the capital, trade and trends shaping the regional economy.
Photo: RNZ Pacific / Koroi Hawkins
This week in the Pacific Business Brief, we look at fuel relief efforts, critical minerals diplomacy, and fallout at a publicly funded trust.
In this edition:
- ABD to provide millions in financial relief to Pacific countries
- The Quad’s $20 billion critical mineral push
- Pacific Business Trust’s embattled CEO resigns
Motorists in parts of Fiji lined up at petrol stations on Tuesday night to fuel up.
Photo: Facebook / Fiji News & Sports
ADB fronts up cash for fuel
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) says it is prepared to spend hundreds of millions to support Pacific countries through the fuel crisis.
At the beginning of the month, Fiji secured a US$200 million loan from the ADB for budget support, which the country will receive within three to four months.
Shortly after, the Australian government handed Fiji around US$21m, while New Zealand gave them around US$3 million in grants.
ADB’s Pacific lead Emma Veve told RNZ Pacific that help requests from Pacific Island governments have begun only recently.
“The Pacific has actually shown quite a lot of resilience to date. By and large, governments are dealing with it through management and redirection of their own resources … [but] no one’s clear about when the end is in sight.”
Veve said that support for each country that asks will range from US$10m to $US100m, depending on their size.
She said so far the ADB has received written requests from “five or six” governments.
The ADB is in active discussions with the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa and Nauru, alongside Fiji. While Papua New Guinea has not asked for any help, nor have Tuvalu, Niue or the Cook Islands.
“The intent would be to start to provide this assistance as soon as possible,” Veve said, adding that there will be no funding shifted from other active projects, such as for renewable energy.
“In all cases, regardless of the type of fund, this will be additional to what their usual country allocations are,” she said.
“I think this has been a reminder to Pacific countries that they really need to plan for for energy security … it has reinvigorated that planning for ramping up renewables in the Pacific, because we are bringing new financing to help cover the cost increases.
“We’re trying to make this difficult situation into a really a positive situation,” she said.
An image from the National Oceanography Centre shows a carnivorous sponge, photographed during an expedition to the NE Pacific abyss and found in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ). A recent executive order by US President Donald Trump could open the door to Nauru deep sea mining in the CCZ.
Photo: National Oceanography Centre/ AFP
Deepsea mining update
Australia, India, Japan, and the United States – known as the Quad group – will work among themselves to build up a critical minerals supply system that America deems is “secure”.
The Quad, or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, is an informal strategic and diplomatic partnerhsip.
The US State Department claimed the Quad’s ‘Critical Minerals Initiative Framework will “mobilise up to $20 billion in government and private sector support through new and existing efforts to strengthen critical minerals supply chains, including in mining, processing, and recycling.”
“Quad partners aim to improve the overall environment for critical minerals development, as appropriate and in accordance with their respective domestic laws,” a statement read.
It aligns with an executive order signed by the Trump Administration in April 2025, which instructed officials to turbocharge the sector, and characterised mineral supply chains as a matter of national security.
A repoerted by AP on Monday said that at least nine companies are in talks with the government for access to seabed minerals, with the US issuing permits unilaterally that bypass the International Seabed Authority (ISA).
“All the action suggests the US may soon give the green light for companies to commercially mine the seabed – something that’s never been done in international waters,” the AP report noted.
ISA secretary-general Leticia Carvalho told ABC’s Pacific Beat that this is unlawful and undermines international maritime law.
It comes as the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced a mission to map the Cook Islands’ seafloor for nodules, Baird Maritime reported on Tuesday.
“The 28-day expedition will take place in July and August 2026 … his work will build on a NOAA-funded 2025 expedition conducted in the Cook Islands on the exploration vessel Nautilus with the Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority and the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute.”
Pacific Business Trust
Photo: Pacific Business Trust
Pacific Business Trust head resigns
The Pacific Business Trust’s (PBT) embattled chief executive Mary Los’e has resigned.
PBT chair Ulu Aiono said Los’e could no longer be effective in her role due to circumstances she inherited in 2023, and what he called the “ongoing turmoil” of events since.
“It is time to advance with the new beginning I want out of this situation” he said in a LinkedIn post.
Responding to criticism online, Aiono said that “to be in Mary’s shoes in recent months made her the moving target for anger and other outrages,” adding “no one is perfect”.
Los’e has faced several allegations from former PBT members about preferential treatment, and fought off an employment relations dispute in 2024.
Samoan entrepreneur Hana Schmidt made a series of allegations against Los’e personally in October of last year, telling Stuff that her consulting business had been “cut off” without explanation, losing client referrals from PBT, and being disinvited from events.
Schmidt was handed a cease and desist letter from PBT shortly after she went public, which described her claims as “false, offensive, and highly damaging”.
In mid-2023, PBT under Lose’s leadership lost an employment dispute with two dismissed staff members, being ordered to pay $52,000 in total.
And in May of this year, her brother Joseph, a senior news editor at the New Zealand Herald, was let go after it was revealed he had used his work account to promote his sister.
The PBTis publicly funded by the Ministry for Pacific Peoples.
