The biggest achievement in this government’s first year is the effort to save the Maldives from bankruptcy, President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu has said.
Speaking at a ceremony held at the Social Center tonight to mark the government’s first anniversary, President Dr. Muizzu said that some people have been noting that the economy was unmanageable and the country was on the verge of bankruptcy when this government took over. However, he said that the alarm bells of potential bankruptcy started ringing before this government came to power.
President Dr. Muizzu said that the alarm of potential bankruptcy started ringing before this government took over. He mentioned that an IMF report released six days before he took office had described the country’s situation.
He also said that the country was in debt of over 120 billion rufiyaa.
“So, they planned to bankrupt the country, failed to manage the economy for five years, exhausted that year’s supplementary budget, spent extra, and made a document to legalize spending without getting the Parliament’s approval and passing the budget, which is against the Constitution. This is how they managed the economy,” the President said.
The President said that the people decided to move towards a Maldives for Maldivians to recover from an economy that was being pushed towards bankruptcy. He said that the previous government had printed 8 billion rufiyaa, which was the situation as of November 17, 2023.
At that time, financial institutions were predicting that the Maldives would go bankrupt by April 2024, the President said. He said he took over a country in such a precarious state.
“There are many reasons why they were saying this. In the five years of the previous government, they spent 22.7 billion rufiyaa, and an additional 50.9 billion rufiyaa. They also printed 8.4 billion rufiyaa. The interest on debt was increasing by 1.4 billion rufiyaa annually. So this was the situation we inherited. In other words, out of every 100 rufiyaa the state received, 24 rufiyaa had to be used for loan repayment. Out of that, 16 rufiyaa had to be paid as interest,” the President said.
The President said that despite this situation, this government has managed to reach today without going bankrupt by shaping policies to pay due debts without printing money. He said they have overcome the economic destruction and the pit that the previous government had pushed the country into.
Therefore, the President said that the biggest task accomplished in this government’s 52 weeks was overcoming that situation, and that this was the biggest achievement.
