The Asian Development Bank has issued stilted growth projections through the Pacific for the next two years.
On Wednesday, the regional bank and major aid funder issued its flagship annual forecasts, with a headline figure of 3.9 per cent growth for the region in 2025.
That's down from the 4.2 per cent growth experienced in 2024, and comes before a further fall expected in 2026 of 3.6 per cent.
Crucially, the forecasts were taken before the announcement of trade-crippling tariffs by the United States last week, which might have downgraded those projections.
The imposition of tariffs will directly impact each nation to a different degree, but is expected as whole to bring down global growth.
The ADB sees mining growth in Papua New Guinea, the region's biggest economy, but gold output winding down.
"Major development challenges - power blackouts, security concerns, and high business costs - continue to weigh on the outlook," the ADB report states.
Fiji enjoyed growth of 3.5 per cent in 2024, when it received more visitors than ever before - half of whom were Australian, and another quarter from New Zealand.
"Tourism will remain a key driver of growth in the Cook Islands, Fiji, and Samoa, but progress in the tourism sector will moderate," the report states, pointing to a lack of accommodation for further growth.
Vanuatu has already suffered a tourist slowdown, with receipts down around 45 per cent.
Air Vanuatu's downfall last year slowed arrivals by air, and the destruction of port infrastructure in December's earthquake now stops tourists arriving by sea to the capital, Port Vila.
Those twin factors have led remittances, largely from workers in Australian and Kiwi seasonal work schemes, to be worth more to Vanuatu than tourism.
GDP growth in the Solomon Islands slowed in 2024 after the boost from hosting the 2023 Pacific Games subsided, but exports - including mining and fishing - are expected to recover lost momentum.
Nauru, one of the region's richer nations per capita, enjoys higher growth forecasts owing to "the impact of fiscal assistance through the Australia-Nauru treaty and the hosting of the Micronesian Games in 2026".
Australia is funding various projects in Nauru under the pact, and paying the Micronesia nation to resettle would-be immigrants with criminal records.
Nauru's growth was 1.6 per cent in 2023 and will reach 2.5 per cent next year.
The ABD also sees an inflation challenge in Papua New Guinea owing to currency depreciation, jumping from 0.7 per cent last year to 3.8 per cent this year.
ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK 2025 GROWTH FORECASTS
* Pacific region: 3.9 per cent
* Papua New Guinea: 4.2 per cent
* Fiji: 3.0 per cent
* Solomon Islands: 2.9 per cent
* Vanuatu: 2.0 per cent
* Samoa: 5.5 per cent
* Tonga: 2.5 per cent
