Former President Mohamed Nasheed, spoke out about the huge amount of money the Maldives owes to China in his first interview since surviving an assassination attempt, to India's ‘WION Tv’.
While he was asked about China's increasing influence in the Maldives, Nasheed -who is also the parliament speaker- said that one of the first things the 19th parliament did was "to reassess the nation's debt".
The Parliament has worked very hard in accessing how much we are in debt to different Chinese companies, different Chinese banks and also the Chinese state"Speaker of Parliament Mohamed Nasheed
President Nasheed further stated that although China was called out to restructure the debt, it still has yet to do so.
Noting that the country faces difficulty is paying back the money "due to the already existing financial difficulties and considering that the projects we spent money on were not financially viable", the former president called for all political parties must come to an understanding on a "India-first foreign policy"
I think I will be working very hard to see that the opposition also understands that we need to have an all-party dialogue and an all-party understanding of foreign policy, especially on our relations with India.Speaker of Parliament Mohamed Nasheed
The Chinese Ambassador had announced that they were discussing the debt restructuring and sustainability under G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) back in September 2020, however, no further statement was made after that.
