Forum Secretary General, Baron Divavesi Waqa says the Pacific’s Correspondent Banking Relationship (CBR) office is now fully established and working to address banking challenges faced by Pacific countries affected by de-risking measures.
Responding to a question during a press conference on discussions at the 2026 Forum Economic Ministers Meeting (FEMM) about correspondent banking and efforts to tackle the issue, Waqa said ministers remain aware of the difficulties countries face.
“Ministers do realise the difficulties that each and every one of the countries go through with these de-risking and so on and so forth, of banking arrangements,” he said.
Waqa said the Forum’s CBR team provided ministers and officials with an update during the meeting.
He said the Forum’s dedicated office dealing with correspondent banking issues is now operational.
“We had our CBR team here to update our ministers and officials.
“As you know, the CBR office in the Forum is now well established. We’ve got our people on board,” he said.
Waqa said the office is expected to begin addressing country-specific challenges.
He said progress to date had been encouraging.
“Hopefully we can start addressing some of the individual challenges.”
“At the moment, it seems like it’s going quite well,” he said.
Waqa said ministers received an update on current correspondent banking arrangements and efforts being explored to address the issue.
“The report to the ministers on the CBR arrangements, they’re looking for all sorts of solutions.”
He also pointed to the Republic of the Marshall Islands’ Lomalo digital payment platform as an example of initiatives that could help improve payment systems.
“There’s also an excellent initiative here. You’re probably not aware, but we were all shown this Lomalo. We tried it out last night at the market.”
“These are little projects here and there that assist us in providing our payment mechanism to make it more easier,” Waqa said.
Despite progress, Waqa said correspondent banking challenges remain and will require continued attention.However, he said the current situation remains stable.
“The problem will continue and hopefully we can keep working on it to reduce the effects of that.”
“At the moment, it’s quite stable,” said SG Waqa.
