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Inward remittances (REM) are playing a major part in the economic growth process in the East Asia and Pacific region. Among the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), six are low middle income countries (LMICs), which are supported by growing annual remittances from the rest of the world as well as four members of ASEAN, namely Brunei and Singapore, which are, two high income countries; and two upper middle income countries namely Malaysia and Thailand. Aside from augmenting real resources in the form of foreign exchange reserves, REM contributes to the alleviation of poverty by supplementing the recipient households’ incomes. Among the six LMICS of ASEAN, three countries, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, known as transitional countries since the mid-1990s towards a full market regime, received much less attention from researchers due to the inadequate number of annual data series for empirical studies. This paper is an attempt to fill the gap by a panel econometric study on REM and growth nexus during the 18-year period (2000-17). The findings are: (i) the REM inflows have been promoting economic growth; and (ii) the spread of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has had a positive and significant influence, thereby confirming the similar finding of studies elsewhere that ICT plays an effective contingent role in the remittance-growth nexus.

Inward remittances have been a great support to Pacific Island Countries, including Tonga. Aside from being a major source of foreign exchange earnings, they supplement domestic savings and real resources. This paper examines the role of remittances in the economic growth of Tonga’s during a 28 year period (1981-2007).

This paper investigates the sustainability of Fiji¿s trade deficits in the context of recent, unprecedented fiscal expansion and private sector credit. Employing various tests for determining structural break in the time series and cointegration test, the study results support the existence of a long run equilibrium relationship between exports and imports in Fiji implying that trade deficits are only a short-term phenomena and hence, sustainable in the long run.

The Pacific Islands Forum, the regional organization comprising 14 Pacific Island countries (PICs), Australia and New Zealand is committed to strengthen regional cooperation and integration. This paper examines progress in real and financial integration in the region. Utilizing the methodology based on international parity conditions: purchasing power parity and uncovered interest parity, the study concludes that while PICs' integration amongst themselves and with Australia and New Zealand, is relatively advanced with respect to goods and services, the financial market integration remains incomplete. The policy implication is impact of further liberalization is likely to be substantial on financial markets.

By utilising a Cointegrating Vector Autoregressive Model, this paper assesses the relative effectiveness the fiscal and monetary policies on growth. It is observed that government expenditure has the strongest effect on Fiji's national income which significantly explains Fiji's GDP error variance even after a three year period with regard to the effect of shocks, we observed that the national income impulse respons to the one standard error shock among all macroeconomic variables, i.e. government expenditure and foreign assets, which is not permanent but transitory.