Airport rented out to GMR to cover for budgetary shortfall: President

Ibrahim Nasir International Airport was rented out to the Indian giant GMR by former Government led by Mohamed Nasheed in order to cover for budgetary shortfalls, said President Dr. Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik.

Speaking to Maldivians staying in Sri Lanka during his ongoing visit to the country, the President said that national debt is at an alarmingly high rate, and that government expenditure was at an extremely high level. The President said that Nasheed’s government responded to budget deficit on the face of rising public expenditure by renting or selling valuable public assets.

“After years of such expenditure, public assets were sold. As we all saw, the Water Company MWSC, and government shares in Dhiraagu were also sold in order to raise funds for budget”, said the President.

President Waheed said that his administration’s policy was to take steps and adopt policies to manage budget deficits instead of trying to cover shortfalls by selling public assets. He said that several steps had been taken to cut down public expenditure.

“We do not have many means of national income, and we cannot manage our budget the old way. Hence, we have been thinking about and implementing measures to cut down expenditure”, said the President.

The President said that salary rates of government employees needed to be revised, and the system by which independent bodies decide on their own the rates of their salaries should also be revised. The President said that the Maldives currently has a number of subsidy programs which cost huge amounts and that the country could not afford this.

“Wage bill is staggeringly high. As for the wages of independent bodies, they just write whatever figures they want without any coordination, and then the Government must pay those amounts”, said the President.

The Government has recently cut down 15 per cent from the budget of each individual government department, and changed the rates of some subsidies, and also sent a recommendation to Financial Committee at the People’s Majlis proposing to raise GST and import duty rates. These measures were proposed when it became certain that the 14-billion Rufiyaa budget passed for the current year would hit 18 billion with a 3.4 billion deficit.

Government expenditure for the first 6 months of this year was revealed to be at Rufiyaa 7.1 billion.