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A Profession That Does Not Replace Itself: Capability Erosion in Fiji's Register of Valuers, 1987 to 2025

Author/s: Matthew S Myers

Date Published: 29/10/2026

Published in: Volume 31 - 2026 Issue 2 (pages 1 - 26)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.64361/14445921.2026.212330

Abstract

Fiji has what the professional development literature prescribes for building a profession. Twenty-five gazetted rolls of the Register of Valuers, spanning 1987 to 2025 and analysed here for the first time, record what that produced. The register opened at 49 practitioners, peaked at 80 in 2002, and stood at 46 at the end of 2025, below the roll on which it began, with more than half of all persons ever registered having departed. The Native Land Trust Board, which created the profession through in-house training, now carries 4 valuers where it once carried 21, and two continuing professional development events took place in the decade after Fiji adopted international standards. One illustrative example shows what the erosion costs: a 658% variance between two valuations of the same property, in a market with no mechanism to detect it. A hazard model of exit by tenure projects 34 valuers in 2035 and 31 in 2040; the observed intake of 1.3 a year sustains a long-run register of 29, against the 2.0 needed to hold the present 46. Fiji adopted the forms of a modern profession without the capabilities to sustain them, a pattern consistent with capability trap theory. No comparable longitudinal study of professional capacity exists for any Pacific SIDS sector.

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Keywords

Capability Trap - Fiji - Pacific Sids - Professional Capacity - Property Valuation - Small Island Markets

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