President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih has detailed the many ways in which his administration had stepped up in the face of the global Covid-19 pandemic to provide security to businesses and citizens over the past year.
The president made these remarks while delivering his third Presidential Address at parliament on Thursday morning, acknowledging that, from an economic perspective, the Maldives was one of the countries affected most negatively by the global pandemic as most of the nation's economy was reliant on the hard-hit industries of travel and tourism.
President Solih remarked that his administration had understood clearly the difficulties small and middle-income businesses would be facing, along with individual families, and that the government had expended all of their resources to ensure that economic activities could be resumed at a rate that could help sustain the citizens of Maldives.
From home-bakers to restaurateurs, it is indeed worth noting the strength and hard work that was shown by our citizens to navigate through these circumstances. Our aim was to prevent businesses going under, to help manage the daily affairs of those whose employment status had been affected and to ensure social protection for families.President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, Third Presidential Address
The government has continued to operate with the aim to support businesses of all sizes, and to provide for those citizens who had their income and employment status impacted by the effects of the global Covid-19 pandemic. In this vein, President Solih announced that the government had expended more than MVR 1 billion as loans to small and middle-income businesses, freelancers and even big businesses, contingent on the reservation that they secured the jobs of Maldivian employees at a time large-scale lay-offs were being adopted to minimize the economic impact of Covid-19 on enterprise finances.
President Solih also revealed that over the past year, the government had subsidized utilities such as electricity and water by more than MVR 117 million for the benefit of citizens struggling through the economic downturn resulting from Covid-19.
Additionally, structures for repaying housing loans were also revised, with a moratorium being provided for youths paying back student loans to the government. Further, the government provided a six month deference for rent and lease payments in relation to islands and land allocated for tourism. Referring once more to the difficulties endured by citizens in the pandemic, President Solih noted that 2,421 Maldivians who had been stranded abroad following international travel restrictions had been repatriated to the Maldives from 15 countries.
In his address, the President went on to detail that 17,147 persons left unemployed by the pandemic by December 2020 had received more than MVR 221 million in stimulus. President Solih also revealed that MVR 400 million from this year's budget had been allocated as loans to further support small and middle-income enterprises in the country.
Alluding to the struggles of those operating in the construction sector in Maldives, President Solih remarked that his administration had facilitated MVR 95 million in loans specifically to 240 construction businesses to strengthen their financial standing following the economic downturn caused by Covid-19.
Addressing the nation at parliament on Thursday, Solih went on to explain that while the People's Majlis had allocated MVR 37.9 billion for the state's budget the previous year, the government had been operating in austerity as the global pandemic stalled economic activities across different sectors. Adding that the government's fiscal policy had immediately been restructured to focus on reducing public expenditure, President Solih revealed that including extensive spending for Covid-19 response efforts, the government spending for the year 2020 had been MVR 28.5 billion. President Solih highlighted that salaries had not been deducted for civil service employees even as the government continued to provide services with limited funding.
Remarking on the outlook for pandemic recovery in the Maldives, President Solih went on to project that realistically, it would take at least one or two more years for the Maldives to recover from the downward economic dive cased by the global Covid-19 pandemic. He stressed that it was critixal to diversify the economy at this critical juncture, and detailed government plans to distribute the profits accumulated by the nation's dominant tourism industry across all the islands of the Maldives, from the north to the south.
The president further stressed the importance of building skilled and educated youth to further support the nation's economic recovery in the coming months, noting that the government would continue to expend from the state budget in order to provide capacity building and higher education opportunities for job-seeking youths, who he described as the key to further developing the Maldives as a nation.
