Author: JJ Robinson

Maldives qualifies for semi-finals with 3-1 SAFF win over Bangladesh

The Maldives knocked out top-ranked Bangladesh 3-1 in the SAFF Cup tournament last night, qualifying for the semi-finals alongside Nepal.

The Maldives’ Ahmed Thariq quickly scored in the sixth minute of the match, scoring again in the 17th. Ali Ashfaq scored the country’s third goal in the 70th minute. Bangladesh’s Sahedul Shahed scored in the 29th minute.

Bangladesh retained greater possession but the speedy and precise Maldivians gave them few opportunities to score in Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.

Bangladesh has beaten the Maldives in three previous SAAF match ups, and has lost only once to the small island nation since 1984. The last time Bangladesh defeated the Maldives was during the 2009 final.

After last night’s win, young people on motorbikes circled Male’ hooting and cheering. The result means the Maldives and Nepal now top Group B with five points apiece. Heading into the semifinals, India and Afghanistan lead Group A with four points each.

The Maldives drew the tournament’s two opening matches before finding their feet in last night’s match.

“It was a very difficult win. Bangladesh was a very good side. We had a plan and it worked. They brought a lot of changes and we improved,” said Maldives coach Istvan Urbanyi.

“If we come to a tournament with high expectation, we need to deal with it. We need to score goals and then the confidence comes. It wasn’t a case of poor form, but of confidence. During this game, we had some difficult periods. It’s not easy to win.”

“In Maldives, you have a lot of skillful players. All we need is better facilities. Maybe our players need some experience, go abroad to get the feel to be a professional football player. The other thing is that everybody likes football.”

A home team match-up against India would be difficult, he conceded.

“Every team has a chance to reach the semi-finals. In the last game even, if Pakistan beat Nepal, they had the chance to qualify and Nepal will be out. Sri Lanka has a good team and a good spirit. I was with the Under-23 team in Dhaka and Afghanistan reached the finals. So I’m not surprised with their performance here.”

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Undercover journalists expose UK lobby firm’s influence in Sri Lanka

Executives from UK-based lobby firm and reputation management company Bell Pottinger have been secretly recorded as admitting to writing Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s speech to the United Nations last year.

Undercover journalists posing as representatives of the Uzbekistan government approached several such firms to try and determine the influence such lobbyists had in the UK government.

During the meetings, which were secretly recorded, journalists from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism asked Chairman of Bell Pottinger Public Relations David Wilson about the company’s work improving the image of the Sri Lankan government. The executives referred to “dark arts” used to help rebuild the reputations of countries and companies accused of human rights violations.

Sri Lanka has been under international pressure to submit to a war crimes investigation after a UN report published in April found “credible allegations, which if proven, indicate that a wide range of serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law were committed both by the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

The Maldives has defended Sri Lanka, with Foreign Minister Ahmed Naseem stating that the UN Panel report was “singularly counterproductive”. A report by Sri Lanka’s own ‘Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation’ report has not yet been made public.

Bell Pottinger’s Wilson told the undercover journalists that the “Peace and Reconciliation” commission had a “fundamental flaw” in its remit, in that it was trying “to bury the past”.

“We wrote President Rajapakse s speech to the UN last year which was very well received,” Wilson said, claiming that it was used in preference one prepared by Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry.

In the speech, Rajapakse expresses concerns over the “unacceptable degree of selectivity” of international organisations operating in the developing world, which “ must keep a vigil against these irregular modalities which should be resisted through our collective strength.”

Wilson also told journalists that this speech “went a long way in taking country to where they need to go”, and claimed that Bell Pottinger had added “some critical dialogue at government level” inside the UK, and introduced “some balance outside of a couple of media channels. The Times and Channel 4 are particularly staunch in their opposition.”

Channel 4 had aired video footage purportedly showing Sri Lankan troops executing bound and naked Tamil dissidents in the closing days of the country’s civil war. The authenticity of the footage was challenged by the Sri Lankan government, but described as authentic by the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Christof Heyns.

Speaking to the undercover journalists, Managing Director of Bell Pottinger Public Affairs Tim Collins said that improvements in a country’ s reputation did not need to be fast: “As long as you can see that each year is a little better than before, that’s fine,” he was quoted as saying in the UK’s Independent newspaper.

Uzbekistan, he suggested, should stress its position as an emerging market: “To the Western world it’s a developing market so you can always have the message that: ‘We are changing with the times – we are emerging, learning as a nation and growing’,” Collins said. Such a campaign to improve the country’s image would cost in excess of £100,000 a month, he suggested.

Former President of the Maldives Maumoon Abdul Gayoom also engaged a large public relations firm in a bid to improve the country’s international image.

Speaking to Minivan News in June, former Foreign Minister Dr Ahmed Shaheed explained how the involvement of PR firm Hill & Knowlton extended as far as writing legislation, and even advocating controversial Constitutional amendments such as freedom of religion.

“When you are in office for 30 years and your ministers and associates make recommendations to you, you don’t believe them,’ Dr Shaheed told Minivan News. “But if you have a posh firm from London making recommendations, you tend to believe them. And Gayoom did.

“Things that Gayoom did on their recommendation included separating the army from the police, a whole raft of reforms on judicial function, prison reform, constitutional reform – all these things were done at their request. The only H&K recommendations he left out – Hill & Knowlton wanted Yameen and the then Police Chief (Adam Zahir) sacked, and they also suggested that freedom of religion was something that was internationally demanded.

“Of course, there’s no way any government here can introduce freedom of religion, and H&K’s usefulness ended when they recommended Yameen be removed – at that point Gayoom stopped listening to them.

“H&K had a contract signed in April 2005, and their proposals were presented as a package. Their engagement was always positive and there was nothing covered up, and they came here only after speaking to the UK Foreign Office and US State Department. Of course, they are a commercial company and had their fees.”

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Media monitoring report hints at bias of local media

Transparency Maldives has published a report monitoring the performance and bias of six media outlets between March 23 and April 4 of this year.

The six outlets evaluated were DhiTV, MNBC One and VTV (television), and Haveeru, Miadhu and Minivan News (print).

News content produced by these outlets during the reporting period was categorised by subject (corruption, politics, human rights, etc), the air time and centimetres of coverage recorded, and the tone assessed (positive, negative, neutral).

This was reported by three people who ranked the connotations of words and pictures from positive to negative on a scale of 1-5.

Transparency Maldives observed notable limitations in the report, most significantly the small time period (two weeks) of monitoring. There was also no analysis of the order of news stories indicating the priority of subjects to the Maldivian press, or the omission of coverage.

Content was also subject to the news agenda of the short reporting period, and the subject matter of stories analysed did not incorporate stories relating to crime, gender or religion.

Key headlines on Minivan during the reporting period included: ‘Death of tourist at Kuredhoo Island Resort last year was accidental, finds UK inquest’,  ‘Parliament falling short of public expectations despite work rate, says Speaker Shahid,’ ‘Mahlouf calls on DRP supporters to shun “Thasmeen faction” rally’, ‘Blackmarket dollar crackdown won’t address demand, warn businesses, financial experts’, ‘Judges legitimised JSC’s actions with their silence’, and ‘Staff threw stones at intruder and left him in the water to drown, alleges Baros staff member’.

DhiTV

DhiTV was the first private television station to be registered in the Maldives in 2008, by local businessman Mohamed ‘Champa’ Moosa. It faces allegations from the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) of favouring the opposition.

25 percent of DhiTV’s coverage of parliament and 36 percent of its coverage of government during the reporting period was negative. Other subjects with a high weight of negative coverage included President Mohamed Nasheed (41 percent),  Ahmed Thasmeen Ali’s faction of the opposition Dhivehi Rayithunge Party (43 percent), and the Maldivian Democratic Party (22 percent).

DhiTV’s most balanced coverage was of police, which was 80 percent neutral.

MNBC One

MNBC is a 100 percent government owned corporation that manages the assets of former state broadcaster Television Maldives (TVM) and Voice of Maldives (VOM). It is currently locked in a legal dispute for its assets with the Maldives Broadcast Corporation (MBC), a body created by the then opposition-majority parliament. It faces allegations from opposition parties of favouring the government.

Twelve percent of MNBC’s coverage of the government during the reporting period was positive,  and four percent negative (the remainder was neutral). 17 percent of the station’s coverage of President Mohamed Nasheed was positive and 83 percent was neutral – there was no negative coverage of the President during the reporting period.

All of MNBC’s coverage of the council, police and Adhaalath Party was neutral.

VTV

Villa TV (VTV) is owned and funded by local business tycoon and Jumhoree Party (JP) MP Gasim Ibrahim, and faces allegations of political bias due to the nature of its ownership.

VTV’s coverage of parliament was very neutral (90 percent), while its coverage of government during the reporting period was 35 percent negative.

Coverage of Ahmed Thasmeen Ali’s faction of the opposition (DRP) was overwhelmingly negative (67 percent), significantly more so than its coverage of the MDP (20 percent negative to six percent positive).

31 percent of VTV’s coverage of its owner’s Jumhoree Party (JP) was positive – only two percent was negative. The report noted that the space afforded the JP was “significantly high”.

Haveeru

Newspaper Haveeru is the largest national daily with a print run of 3000 copies. It was first published by Mohamed Zahir Hussain, who according to Transparency “has close ties with former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom”.

Haveeru’s coverage of the government during the reporting period leaned towards negative (12 percent negative, 7 percent positive), and coverage of the MDP was almost twice as negative as positive (21 percent to 10 percent). Coverage of parliament was more negative (27 percent) than positive (nine percent).

Coverage of the DRP was 29 percent negative and only one percent positive. 46 percent of its coverage of Thasmeen’s faction was negative (to six percent positive), while its coverage of Gayoom’s faction was more balanced (32 percent negative, 13 percent positive). Coverage of the People’s Alliance (PA), founded by Gayoom’s half brother Abdulla Yameen, was 60 percent negative.

Twelve percent of Haveeru’s coverage of police was negative, compared to two percent positive.

Miadhu

Miadhu was founded by Ahmed Abdullah, the Minister of Energy, Environment and Water under the former government.

“Miadhu boasts a record of having no complaints about their publications so far, according to the Editor Abdul Latheef,” the report noted. Miadhu claimed to be circulating 3000 copies.

Miadhu’s coverage of the government was 17 percent positive and 19 percent negative, however its coverage of President Nasheed was weighted towards the positive (18 percent positive to 3 percent negative).

The newspaper’s coverage of the DRP was more significantly negative (12 percent) than positive (two percent).

Miadhu’s coverage of police, council, court and the elections commission was neutral.

Minivan News

Minivan News was analysed by Transparency alongside with print media, despite it being an online publication. Articles were printed and content physically measured in centimetres.

Initially established by the MDP in 2005 “due to the futility of attempting to cover [then] opposition news in the conservative media outlets that existed then”, Minivan News and the now defunct print publication ‘Minivan Daily’ met with strong interference from the former government, with several of its foreign reporters being deported.

“Many staff of Minivan were subjected to police intimidation, threats and harassment,” Transparency’s report noted, while the newspaper’s office in Colombo was raided by Sri Lankan police after it was falsely reported to be “a hub for dealing in arms.”

Following the change of power in 2008 the Minivan Daily newspaper was disbanded together with all funding from politically-affiliated sources. The Minivan News website was passed to a succession of foreign editors who attempted to establish it as a credible and objective source of news of the Maldives, and it has since relied on income generated through banner advertising.

Minivan’s coverage of the government during the reporting period was more significantly negative (19 percent) than positive (four percent). Coverage of President Mohamed Nasheed was generally balanced at 9 percent negative and 10 percent positive.

Minivan’s coverage of key institutions was overwhelmingly neutral, including the President’s office (100 percent neutral), High Court (100 percent), Supreme Court (100 percent), Council (100 percent), Local Government Authority (100 percent), Anti-Corruption Commission (100 percent) and parliament (98 percent). The exceptions were the Judicial Services Commission, of which coverage was 19 percent negative and 0 percent positive, and the Civil Court (44 percent of coverage was negative).

Coverage of the DRP inclined towards negative (34 percent) over positive (6 percent). Coverage of Thasmeen’s faction during the reporting period was 76 percent negative, while coverage of Gayoom’s faction was 23 percent negative. Coverage of the PA was 62 percent negative.

Minivan’s coverage of the MDP was slightly more negative that it was positive (8 percent to 6 percent respectively).

Transparency noted that Minivan’s coverage of the Adhaalath Party was 100 percent positive.

Recommendations

Transparency Maldives’ Project Director, Aiman Rasheed, acknowledged that the results were impacted by the key stories and news agenda of the short reporting period, “but even though two weeks is the minimum reporting period possible, you can already see the patterns emerge.”

Transparency’s Director Ilham Mohamed said media’s coverage in the week of the local council elections was also analysed, but said the results would be shared individually with media outlets as one week was too short a reporting period for a statistically-sound analysis. Transparency was considering expanding the project to include a longer monitoring period, she said.

Key recommendations in the report for media outlets included ensuring that journalists employed are provided with professional training and apprenticeships, and curbing the influence of owners and financial interests.

“Editorial policies of all media outlets should respect the principles of fair and balanced coverage and provide all parties with equal opportunities to present their view,” Transparency stated. “This is especially so during election period where the election laws specifically call for fair coverage to all candidates.”

Several political parties had announced boycotts of various media outlets on the assumption that coverage was politically influenced, the report stated, calling for an end to such boycotts.

“Political parties should recognise and respect the independence of journlists and media to ensure equal access to interiews, press conferences, party functions and access to speakers at panel discussions.”

The report also called for groups such as the Maldives Journalists Association (MJA) and South Asian Federation for Media Associations (SAFMA) “to play a stronger role in advocating for media freedoms.”

Download the full report (English)

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Body of missing 37 year old woman found in Kudahuvadhoo lagoon

Police are investigating the death of a 37 year-old woman who was found floating in the lagoon of Kudahuvadhoo in Dhaal Atoll this morning.

Police Sub-Inspector Ahmed Shiyam said a search began after the woman was reported missing at 2:00 am last night.

President of the Kudahuvadhoo Island Council Ibrahin Fikry told newspaper Haveeru that the woman, identified as ‘Sheereena’ of Kaneeruge, was found near the island’s breakwater at 6:00am. She was bleeding from an injury between her nose and mouth, as if she had been punched or hit, Fikry told Haveeru.

However Sub-Inspector Shiyam told Minivan News that police had not noticed any incriminating injuries on the body and were not yet treating the incident as suspicious.

“The injuries could have [happened] in many ways. We are speaking to family members and the people who saw her last,” he said.

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“Systemic failure to address corruption”: Transparency Maldives

The Maldives has risen slightly to rank 134 in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI).

The country scored 2.5 on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 10 (very clean), placing it alongside Lebanon, Pakistan and Sierra Leone.

The score however is a mild improvement on 2010, when the Maldives was ranked 143th and below Zimbabwe. The Maldives still rated as having higher perceived corruption than many regional neighbours, including Sri Lanka (86), Bangladesh (120) and India (95).

Project Director of Transparency Maldives, Aiman Rasheed, warned that the ranking could not be compared year-to-year, especially in the Maldives where there were only a three sources used to determine the index (India has six).

“Corruption in the Maldives is grand corruption, unlike neighbouring countries where much of it is petty corruption,” Rasheed said. “In the Maldives there is corruption across the judiciary, parliament and members of the executive, all of it interlinked, and a systemic failure of the systems in place to address this. That why we score so low.”

Faced with such endemic and high-level corruption, it was “up to the people of the Maldives to demand better governance”, he said.

Addressing corruption would have political ramifications for the 2013 presidential election, Rasheed agreed, especially for young voters – 40 percent of the population is aged 15-24, resulting in thousands of new youth voters every year.

“Young people are hugely disillusioned by corruption in the Maldives. They have a vision of the type of country they would like to live in,” he said.

New Zealand, Denmark and Finland ranked as having the least perceived corruption, while North Korea, Somalia, Afghanistan and Burma ranked last.

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MDP to launch door-to-door recruitment campaign ahead of 2013

The Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) will begin a three-month door-to-door recruitment campaign after a launch at Dharubaaruge.

“We want every existing member to recruit one more member,” the party’s parliamentary group leader, Ibrahim Solih, told Minivan News.

The launch of the campaign signaled that the party was gearing up for the 2013 Presidential Campaign, he acknowledged. Two officials from the UK Conservative Party had recently visited the Maldives to offer advice in the running of the campaign, he said.

MDP MP ‘Reeko’ Moosa Manik told local media that the party would try to reach 50,000 members by January, and said that the information gathered during the door-to-door campaign would help the party prepare for the 2013 election.

“We’ll re-visit every island, every house in the Maldives within the coming two months,” Moosa said.

Former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom’s new party, the Progressive Party of the Maldives (PPM), has meanwhile claimed to have more than doubled its membership in recent months from 9,000 to 20,000 members.

After months of factional strife and a litany of grievances aired in the media, Gayoom withdrew his endorsement of Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) Leader Ahmed Thasmeen Ali in March this year, accusing his successor of “acting dictatorially” and violating the party’s charter in the controversial dismissal of Deputy Leader Umar Naseer.

The formation of the PPM as distinct from the larger opposition Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) will split the opposition vote, making MDP unlikely to be threatened in the first round of the presidential election. However the party needs to achieve 51 percent of the vote to avoid a run-off, which would likely see MDP standing alone against a hastily-formed alliance of opposition parties and embittered former coalition partners such as the Jumhoree and Adhaalath parties.

DRP Deputy Leader Ibrahim Shareef observed to Minivan News in October that “given current trends”, the 2013 presidential election had the potential to be a replay of the 2008 election in which Nasheed won power in a run-off election against the incumbent Gayoom, due to the (short-term) support of coalition partners.

Faced with a run-off, the disparate opposition groups would temporarily unify over the common ground of ousting the MDP, Shareef predicted, giving power to the largest opposition party.

“Look at the last three elections. In the first round of the 2008 Presidential election Gayoom got 40 percent, while the rest of the then opposition got 60 percent. In the second round the opposition totaled 54 percent. The MDP lost ground in the parliamentary elections, and the majority of the islands voted for the DRP in the local council elections,” he claimed.

“The incumbent government has the resources of the state to get votes, and can get at least 20-30 percent just by being in power. At present trends, 2013 will be a replay of 2008, and as things stand now, whoever is in opposition will go to the second round.”

To avoid a close fight in the second round, the MDP faces the challenge of attracting enough supporters to the polls in the first round to reach the 51 percent needed for an outright win.

This may mean appealing to the youth as much as the established membership base. The UN’s population report this year indicated that 40 percent of the population are aged 15-24, meaning a large number of young people are becoming eligible to vote every year.

Young people were a core demographic for the MDP in the 2008 presidential election, but since then there has been an anecdotal trend of growing political disenfranchisement, spreading distaste for the ‘he said, she said, go-nowhere’ flavour of Maldivian politics, and frustration at ongoing social issues such as high youth unemployment and lack of educational opportunities.

As such, the MDP’s key opponent in 2013 is as likely to be voter apathy as it is any opposition party.

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ADC legal dispute could cost GMR US$25 million: Economic Times

GMR Infrastructure, which is building Maldives’ largest airport, the Male International Airport, could face a funding shortage of $25 million annually, after reports emerged that a local political party – Dhivehi Qaumee Party (DQP) – may file a case against the Bangalore-based company for collecting airport development charges (ADC), reports Indian newspaper The Economic Times.

GMR Infrastructure plans to charge $25 per passenger from the annual departing passenger count of one million, and wants to introduce a $2 insurance charge at the check-in counters starting January to offset the costs incurred in building the airport.

“The local opposition party is alleging that the ADC should be removed. However, GMR has mentioned that as per the terms of the airport agreement, it will be allowed. The company is looking to fund UD$25 million per annum for its capex plan of US$511 million,” said a person close to the development.

DQP vice-president Imad Solih has already submitted a separate civil case, questioning the legitimacy of the charge, and has requested the court to take action against the country’s finance ministry, according to a report by Haaveru Online, a local website.

“ADC at Ibrahim Nasir International Airport, Male, is a charge approved by the Government of Maldives and we will implement the same in due course of time. As of now, we have no official intimation of the same and thus, would not like to comment on speculative news,” a GMR spokesperson said.

GMR has raised debt of $358 million from Axis Bank, Singapore branch, the sole underwriter and mandated lead arranger for the entire debt facility. The debt has a door-todoor tenure of 12 years with ballooning repayments over seven years, commencing from June 2015.

Full story

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“Luxury is overated”: Diva Maldives rebrands

Diva Maldives are rebranding their resorts ‘Lux*’ – Latin for ‘light’ – in what the company claims is a complete overhaul of the Maldivian resort experience.

Speaking at a press conference this morning on the roof of Traders Hotel in Male’, the resort’s General Manager Dominik Ruhl outlined its concerted campaign to differentiate itself.

“The problem is that a lot of hotels here in the Maldives look and feel the same, and development of the industry has been quite slow,” he observed. “Look at any brochure: All resorts have sun, sea, sand and a spa, and a cold towel on arrival. How does a resort set itself apart in a ‘sea of sameness’?”

The five star market in the Maldives was “saturated”, he noted, “and not much is happening.”

“Resorts tended to define themselves in terms of the hardware,, which we all have – villas, pools architecture. They are all fairly similar – but people don’t come to the Maldives to sleep in a 1950s boudoiur. We don’t want to follow the same thoughtless patterns we learned in hotel school 20 years ago.

“We realised that as a resort we are helping people to celebrate life. It might be a honeymoon or a family trips, but visits to the Maldives are usually a celebration.”

In what must have been a highly eclectic planning meeting, Diva’s staff sat down and brainstormed an array of unique and quirky resort features for guests to discover for themselves across the island.

Ice cream carts with homemade low fat ice cream will trundle around the island, fitness instructors will drag guests out of the gym for outdoor exercises, guests will be taught traditional bodu beru drumming, and a red phone box outside reception will let them make free phone calls to anywhere in the world.

Guests will be given a Moleskin journal on arrival to sketch and write down ideas during their stay, “and there will be lots of quirky things for people to find around the island during their stay.”

Air-conditioned spaces will be deemphasised in favour of open areas with hammocks and beanbags, and while heavy “old world” wines will still be sold, the resort will introduce affordable lighter wines under its own label, ‘Scrucap’.

The resort has even imported an entire coffee roasting machine, with the intention of grinding and roasting beans its own beans on the island and serving them from a coffee shop in the lobby complete with newspapers and Kindles.

Ruhl noted that the resort was so proud of its new coffee that it had launched an entire ad campaign around it, instead of blandly continuing to market the sunny beaches.

On the environmental side, the resort will begin desalinating its own water to avoid having to dispose of 170,000 plastic bottles a year.

“I can’t pretend we have zero carbon emissions – we go through 6000-7000 litres of diesel a day,” Ruhl noted. “But we are offsetting this with a company called Carbon Footprint while we look at wind and solar, to improve our energy efficiency.”

Lux* Maldives will join Naiade Resorts’ other properties in the Indian Ocean which are also being rebranded. The company has several hotels in Mauritus and one in the Réunion Islands.

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Government doubles third quarter income

The Maldives government has almost doubled state income for the third quarter of 2011, increasing revenue 92 percent on the same quarter last year, according to the Maldives Inland Revenue Authority (MIRA).

Total dollar income for the period, according to MIRA, was US$60.5 million, made up largely of tourism lease payments (31.7 percent) and income from the 3.5 percent Tourism Goods and Services Tax (19.3 percent, or US$11.6 million). That tax is set to increase to six percent next year.

Total state income stands at Rf 3.4 billion for the year so far (US$220 million), according to MIRA.

Presenting the 2012 budget to parliament this week, Finance Minister Ahmed Inaz predicted that altogether, government income was expected to reach a record Rf 9 billion (US$583 million) this year.

Total expenditure out of the 2012 state budget is estimated to be Rf14.6 billion (US$946.8 million), an 18 percent increase from 2011. However the Inaz highlighted that recurrent expenditure was in line with income for the first time in many years, and the deficit was expected to drop to single figures.

Based on current estimates for 2011 the Maldives had recorded economic growth of 7.5 percent, Inaz said, an improvement of 5.6 percent in 2010. Growth was aided by a 21 percent tourism arrivals – the Maldives expects to welcome its millionth visitor for the year.

The introduction of the TGST was particularly significant in 2011 as it revealed that the government had been substantially underestimating the size of the tourism economy, which based on TGST receipts was actually three times larger than previously imagined.

Registration and collection has also gone surprisingly smoothly. Speaking to Minivan News in May, Inaz remarked on willingness of tourism businesses of all sizes to declare and pay the tax.
“The TSGT is being taken from big resorts as well as small guest houses on remote islands – very small businesses. They declare – amazingly, they declare,” he noted.
However despite the large influx of foreign currency into the tourism sector the Maldivian economy remains subject to a ongoing dollar shortage, with most people unable to exchange rufiya into dollars at the official rate of Rf 15.42.

Inaz expressed concern that 47 percent of transactions in the domestic economy were made through other currencies – almost all resorts charge in dollars and bank overseas – and called on the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) as the country’s central bank to take measures to enforce the use of rufiya as legal tender.

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