ADB invests $680 million in the Pacific in 2025 to build resilience and unlock private finance

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) committed $679.8 million to its Pacific developing member countries in 2025, including $214.4 million in grants from the Asian Development Fund, according to ADB’s Annual Report 2025. The investments spanned transport, water, energy, and finance, reflecting a broad push to strengthen the region’s economic resilience at a time of mounting climate risks and external shocks. ADB Pacific Department Director General Emma Veve said deepening resilience across the Pacific “will be key to reducing the region’s vulnerability to further external shocks” in the years ahead.

Several flagship investments stood out. ADB committed an $80 million grant — with an expected $40 million in World Bank cofinancing — to build a 720-metre bridge across Tonga’s Fanga’uta Lagoon, along with approach roads and upgraded water and drainage systems. In Vanuatu, following the 7.3-magnitude earthquake that struck Port Vila in late 2024, ADB disbursed $5.5 million in emergency relief and committed a further $24.4 million grant to rehabilitate a critical road connecting the capital to its wharves. In Papua New Guinea, ADB is financing predelivery payments for six Airbus A220-100 aircraft to modernize Air Niugini’s fleet — an investment with real consequences for remote mountain communities where air travel is the only practical transport link.

On the private sector side, ADB launched the Pacific Wayfinder program to support job creation, innovation, and capital market development, offering concessional finance and technical assistance to help businesses access investment. The Frontier program is working in parallel to deepen local capital markets for smaller enterprises. ADB also opened a new Solomon Islands Resident Mission in February 2026, a milestone that signals growing institutional commitment to a country that has historically received less multilateral attention than its Pacific neighbors.

Across Asia and the Pacific as a whole, ADB committed $29.3 billion in 2025. For the Pacific specifically — a region of small island states disproportionately exposed to climate change, natural disasters, and geographic isolation — the 2025 portfolio reflects a deliberate effort to pair emergency response with long-term structural investment, and to bring private capital into economies that have long depended almost entirely on public and concessional funding.