Starting a business in Fiji: foreigner's guide (2026)

After years of comprehensive legislative and institutional reform led by FRCS, the EU Council removed Fiji from its tax blacklist. Removal reduces enhanced scrutiny on financial transactions involving Fiji-registered entities, restores foreign investor confidence, and strengthens trade under the EU-Pacific Interim Economic Partnership Agreement.

The National MSME Database (msmeportal.gov.fj) went live as a single online entry point for five major government grant programmes, capturing business data including size, location, employment, and sector. The platform directly reduces friction for small-business applicants seeking government support.

The Reserve Bank of Fiji and the Ministry of Trade launched eight integrated e-services covering the full business-start journey — company/name registration through to tax registration — with a guaranteed 14-day turnaround for complete applications. The platform replaced fragmented manual processes spread across multiple agencies.

Both laws commenced simultaneously: the Investment Act 2021 abolished the mandatory Foreign Investment Registration Certificate (FIRC) and replaced an approvals regime with a reporting regime, while the Investment Fiji Act 2022 transformed Investment Fiji from a foreign-investment regulator into a pure investment-promotion and export-expansion agency. Together they materially reduced the regulatory burden for foreign entrepreneurs starting businesses in Fiji.

Fiji abolished the Business Licensing Act 1976, eliminating the requirement for all businesses to hold a general operating licence before trading. Starting a business now requires only company/business-name registration with the ROC and tax registration with FRCS, removing a significant procedural and cost hurdle.

All companies and business names registered before 14 June 2019 were required to re-register on the new digital ROC platform free of charge, migrating the entire corporate registry to a single digital database. The deadline was subsequently extended to 31 July 2021 to ensure full coverage.

The Registrar of Companies launched an online registration platform (roc.digital.gov.fj), enabling new business-name and company registrations to be completed fully digitally for the first time. The system reduced transaction times and made company formation accessible island-wide without requiring in-person visits to the Suva office.

The EU Council blacklisted Fiji after it failed to implement tax-transparency commitments within the one-year deadline following a 2017 Code of Conduct audit. The blacklisting increased due-diligence scrutiny on Fiji-registered entities and served as a direct catalyst for the wave of corporate governance and tax reforms that followed.

The Companies Act 2015 repealed the colonial-era Companies Act Cap 247 and comprehensively modernised Fiji's company law, introducing updated company structures, strengthened director duties, improved corporate governance requirements, and the transitional framework that enabled the subsequent shift to a digital registry. It is the cornerstone of the current business-formation regime.

The Companies Act Cap 247 (consolidated 1983, modelled on British company law) governed company formation in Fiji for over three decades. Its paper-based, manual regime with no online services, outdated governance rules, and absence of modern investor-protection provisions became the direct impetus for the 2015 overhaul and the digital reforms that followed.