Economic slump mismanagement of govt, Shahid says
Shahid's speech was directed at a statement made by Foreign Minister Moosa Zameer after his visit to China.
By
Ahmed Mizyal
Maldives Democratic President (MDP) President and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Shahid has said China's reference to the temporary economic crisis Maldives is going through is actually mismanagement by this government.
The MDP held a panel discussion with three ministers of the last government on Tuesday evening. Shahid, MDP Chairman and former Economic Minister Fayyaz Ismail and former Finance Minister Ibrahim Ameer were present.
Shahid said all the world's financial institutions believe that the Maldivian economy was on the right track when the MDP regime came to an end.
Shahid's speech was directed at a statement made by Foreign Minister Moosa Zameer after his visit to China.
In an episode of PSM's 'Raajje Miadhu' programme, Zameer said the Chinese Prime Minister had mentioned that the current crisis facing Maldives was temporary.
"Even the Chinese president knows that everything was fine in the Maldives’ economy at the end of the previous government. There are temporary difficulties because of [this government's] mismanagement," Shahid said.
During the opposition panel discussion, the former minister Ameer said the government should be held responsible for the current economic crisis.
"In the last eight months, in fact, the country's economy has fallen into a pit they dug themselves because of the incompetence of these people [this government]”, he said.
Other reasons cited by Ameer were:
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Higher recurrent expenses; he said the number of political posts was kept at 700 in the MDP government but the number of posts in this government is above 2,000
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Bankruptcy of small and medium enterprises
The Ameer said the government has spent a lot of wasteful money in addition to giving political positions, and the current condition forecasted further economic recession.
"We estimated for the 2024 budget that the economy would grow by about 5.4%. But now they have revised it to say that the national productivity will grow by 4.9%," he said.
"So it's changed because of the policies they've brought in these eight months and because they don't know how to manage the financial challenges, because of their incompetence”.
