The Ministry of Finance has revealed that the total spending towards Covid-19 response efforts stands at MVR 866.9 million as of May 21.

According to the “Weekly Covid-19 Spending Report” publicized by the ministry, this is a 0.7% decrease in comparison to the previous week. While the ministry’s report for Week Three noted expenditure at MVR 873.3 million, it said that the decrease to MVR 866.9 million “is primarily due to the cancellation of a medical equipment order by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA)..

The report reveals that NDMA and the Ministry of Health continue to contribute to the majority of expenditure towards Covid-19 response efforts.

The state had spent a total of MVR 435.3 million in supplies and requisites for service provision, 112.6 million in grants, contributions and subsidies, 169.5 million in capital equipment and 55.8 million in land and buildings by May 21.

Finance Ministry revealed that a week-on-week increment of MVR 7.1 million for medical consumables and MVR 6.5 million to acquire supplies and requisites was observed last week.

NDMA spent a total of MVR 651.7 million from their domestic budget out of which most of the amount was spent on procuring supplies and requisites for service provision, which was at MVR 354.7 million. The authority also spent 104.7 million on capital equipment, 17.5 million in grants, contributions and subsidies as well as 28 million for land and buildings as well as 32.1 million on supplies and requisites.

Second comes the health ministry, which spent MVR 139.2 million out of which 72.7 million was spent on procuring supplies and requisites for service provision, 62.3 million on capital equipment and 1.3 million on operational services.

Further, the ministry spent one million on repairs and maintenance, 1.1 million for supplies and requisites as well as MVR 900,000 for travel expenses.

Coming in at third, the Ministry of National Planning and Infrastructure spent a total of 28 million in committed spending out of which 27.8 million was spent for land and buildings with the remaining was spent on supplies and requisites.

Up until May 7, the Ministry of Tourism had spent a total of 27.2 million for Covid-19 related efforts out of which 13.6 million was for operational services, 2.1 million for travel expenses and 7.3 million was spent on supplies and requisites for service provision. Further, the ministry spent an additional 2.7 million on repairs and maintenance. These funds were extracted from their Tourism Activities Implementation Fund.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs spent a total of MVR 6.7 million in committed spending out of which 3.7 million was extracted from their domestic budget and three million from the Zakat fund for grants, contributions and subsidies.

MVR 5.6 million out of the total of MVR 6.9 million spent by the Maldives National Defense Force (MNDF) was for supplies and requisites while MVR one million was spent on repairs and maintenance and MVR 300,000 was spent on procuring capital equipment.

The weekly publication pertains to the “committed spending” on Covid-19 related efforts and is publicized every Monday with the data cut-off date as the Thursday of the following week. However, last week’s report was publicized on Tuesday.