The total spending towards Covid-19 response efforts stands at MVR 892.3 million as of May 28.

The Ministry of Finance made the reveal through its “Weekly Covid-19 Spending Report” publicized on Monday.

The report affirms that this is a 2.9% increase from the fourth week which recorded an expenditure of MVR 866.9 million in Covid-19 response efforts.

The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) remains as the major contributor towards the response efforts, followed by state-run Indhira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH), two of the largest contributors in terms of week-on-week spending.

A majority of NDMA’s spending during the fifth week was on medical equipment and consumables and IGMH spent MVR 4.9 million in procuring medical consumables.

As of May 28, 53.5% of the total spending was committed-spending and supplies and requisites for service provision increase by MVR 12.5 million and capital equipment primarily composed of medical equipment increased by MVR 7.7 million.

The state had spent a total of MVR 447.8 million in supplies and requisites for service provision, 112.7 million in grants, contributions and subsidies, 177.2 million in capital equipment and 56.8 million in land and buildings by May 28.

NDMA spent a total of MVR 668.5 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 360.5 million. The authority also spent 111.5 million on capital equipment, 17.4 million in grants, contributions and subsidies as well as 29 million for land and buildings as well as 35.2 million on supplies and requisites.

Second comes the health ministry, which spent MVR 141.1 million out of which 73.8 million was spent on procuring supplies and requisites for service provision, 63 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.

The Ministry of National Planning and Infrastructure’s expenses for week five remained unchanged, having spent a total of 28 million in committed spending out of which 27.8 million was spent for land and buildings with the remaining, MVR 200,000 was spent on supplies and requisites.

MVR 6.2 million out of the total of MVR 7.6 million spent by the Maldives National Defense Force (MNDF) was for supplies and requisites while MVR 1.1 million was spent on repairs and maintenance and MVR 400,000 was spent on procuring capital equipment.

Up until May 28, 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 2.6 million on repairs and maintenance. These funds were extracted from their Tourism Activities Implementation Fund.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ expenses remained unchanged as well, having 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.

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.