E-Mobility Financing Products for the Fiji Development Bank

Year: 2023–2024  |  Client: Fiji Development Bank (FDB) / GGGI  |  Country: Fiji

Cities Forum supported the Fiji Development Bank (FDB), in partnership with the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), in developing an e-mobility lending policy and a suite of financing products to scale electric mobility in line with Fiji's climate and transport-decarbonisation goals. In small island states, the barrier to electric mobility is frequently not technology but finance: buyers and operators need affordable, well-designed credit to make the switch, and development banks are ideally placed to provide it, if they have the right policies and products. This assignment gave FDB exactly that.

Our approach

The work combined analysis with practical product design. Cities Forum undertook policy analysis to understand the Fijian context, the market, the barriers, the incentives and the alignment with national climate and transport objectives, and conducted stakeholder consultations to ground the design in the realities faced by prospective borrowers, vehicle suppliers and the bank itself. On this basis the team helped shape an e-mobility lending policy for FDB and designed financing products tailored to the segments that can drive the transition, from individual and commercial vehicle buyers to operators and fleets.

What we delivered

The emphasis on product design is what makes such support consequential. A general commitment to "support green transport" achieves little without concrete instruments, loan products with terms, eligibility, risk treatment and incentives calibrated to make electric vehicles genuinely affordable and attractive in Fiji's conditions. By helping FDB translate policy intent into deployable financing products, Cities Forum bridged the gap between climate ambition and the everyday financial decisions that determine whether people and businesses actually adopt electric vehicles.

Impact

The engagement positioned the Fiji Development Bank to become an active enabler of the country's e-mobility transition, offering the financial tools needed to scale electric mobility in support of Fiji's climate and decarbonisation goals. For Cities Forum, it reinforced a distinctive strand of expertise, the financing of sustainable mobility, and the design of the lending policies and products that make it happen, and extended the firm's long-standing engagement with small island developing states across the Pacific.