Month: June 2010

GMR shares rise on back of Maldives deal: Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation

Shares in Maldives GMR Infrastructure shares soared 5.5 percent to INR60 in morning trade on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on Friday, after announcing the day before that it was awarded the contract to manage and expand Male International Airport in the Maldives, the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) has reported.

GMR Infrastructure stock closed 0.5 percent  higher.

GMR Infrastructure reportedly offered US$78 million upfront for the contract, plus 1 percent of total profits in the first year (until 2014) and 10 percent of profits from 2015 to 2035.

Meanwhile, Maldives Airports Company Ltd (MACL) reported an 11.6 percent year-on-year increase in net profit to US$20.1 million for the 12 months ended 31-Dec-2009.

MACL also declared the payment of USD4.9 million in dividends to the Maldives Government, an increase of 36.7 percent year-on-year, and a payment of 1 percent of net profit, US$200,886, as bonus to its employees.

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On-Off-On-Off-On airport privatisation agreement signing function

A ‘hasty function’ organised on Sunday to sign the Male International Airport privatisation agreement with India’s GMR was postponed for a few hours and later for a day, reports Haveeru.

The Maldivian government earlier had set the signing for Wednesday, and the sudden changes of schedule come hours after four opposition parties from the Majlis signed a joint statement opposing the privatisation.

At the President’s Office on Sunday afternoon, the privatisation committee chairperson Mahmood Razee announced ‘some documents are pending’. Afterwards, the President’s Office press secretary Mohamed Zuhair told Haveeru the function was postponed until Monday.

The function was cancelled due to disputes among board members of Maldives Airports Company Limited over appointing a board representative to sign the agreement, reports Haveeru. GMR Infrastructure won the bid last Thursday to expand, modernise and operate the airport for 25 years.

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Regional action on piracy threat essential: Shihab tells SAARC

Dinghies suspected of being associated with piracy are arriving in the seas around the Maldives and a regional mechanism to counter piracy is needed, said the Maldivian minister of home affairs Mohamed Shihab at the SAARC home ministers meeting in Islamabad, Pakistan, reports Miadhu Daily.

The SAARC Drug and Terrorism Offences Monitoring group also needs to be strengthened, Shihab said. Police chiefs, immigration controllers and home secretaries attended the meeting which was held from 23 to 26 June.

This month a dinghy with 6 men aboard was found floating in Maldives waters and rescued by local fishermen off Maamakunudhoo atoll in northern Maldives, reported Miadhu Daily. In May the MNDF rescued an Iranian fishing boat with 20 people aboard 75 miles west of Huvadhu atoll in southern Maldives, and an abandoned boat suspected of belonging to pirates was discovered off Laamu atoll just north of Huvadhu in April. In December 2009, fishermen from Addu atoll spotted a similar boat with seven Somalis in distress drifting off Hithadhoo island in southern Maldives.

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Protect Islam in the Maldives – don’t use it as a political tool: SAAG

The Maldivian constitution places a heavy responsibility on the present government to tread a careful path in developing democracy and at the same time ensure that there is no deviation of any citizen from his/her adherence to Islam, writes Dr S Chandrasekharan for the South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG).

It is claimed that it is possible to establish such a balance and it will be interesting to see how Maldives under the present President Nasheed who in many ways is a liberal himself is able to manage his country and keeps it safe from extremism.

In the days of Gayoom, it was easy to keep track of visitors and prevent elements holding extremist views from visiting or from preaching, but in a democracy as is being practised now, it is difficult for the present government to prevent such visitors from coming in or from such persons making rigid interpretation of Islam.

The result is that on the invitation of religious NGOs within the islands or from the Islamic ministry itself, visitors with dubious background are allowed to come preach without restraint.

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Public servants in the Maldives highest paid in South Asia: Business Times

In 2004 the average civil servant monthly pay in the Maldives was Rf3,000, while currently (after 2008) it is at Rf11,000, The Business Times in Sri Lanka has reported.

“Critics of the former government say this was due to electoral pressure. Those who defend it say it’s a natural response to inflation in the economy,” the article quoted Mifzal Ahmed, Advisor on Investments at the Ministry of Economic Development, as saying.

Private schools and private or private sector-managed, government health care facilities is the way forward for the Maldives, minimising the need to seek high quality education or health care in neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka or India, Mifzal told the publication.

“Affordability? [Maldivians] will beg, borrow or steal to go there because the services are just not available here. The government however will continue to spend on health and education.”

Mr Ahmed said soon after the 2008/2009 elections, a strong need for certain basic services arose. Some basic services were not available to many people while another priority was to make the government more efficient.

In the Maldives, the kind of political handouts came in the form of doling out jobs. Thus the civil service is now in excess of 35,000 which is 1/3rd of the working population – all working in the public sector.
When the Tsunami hit the Maldives and other countries, there was a jump in public spending, which Mr Ahmed acknowledged was understandable, and also a jump in public sector employment party due to pressure from the opposition.

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Failure to upgrade airport could lead to ICAO blacklist: aviation expert

An aviation expert unconnected with the government or bidding process, and with extensive experience of Male’ International Airport, has told Minivan News on condition of anonymity that the state of arguably the country’s most critical piece of economic infrastructure “is far worse than most people realise” and in “urgent need of major investment”.

“The runway hasn’t been resurfaced for 18 years, and it still has cracks and depressions caused by the 2004 tsunami,” he explained.

“Even now there are spots which need to be cut out and resurfaced,” he said, naming several international carriers that had privately expressed concern to the authorities about minor damage caused to their planes by the state of the runway.

Furthermore, the airport does not meet NX14 standards of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) because of the proximity of buildings to the runway, the source said.

“The last time ICAO did audits they were not satisfied. If the airport is not upgraded, the worse case scenario is that ICAO will blacklist the airport – and that means nobody will land here. I’m not scaremongering, but the airport needs major investment,” he said.

“I don’t think the politicians understand the situation,” he explained. “The runway needs urgent repair and maintenance, and aircraft from places like Germany – that have travelled over 10 hours with 300 passengers on board – are being held above the airport for 14-20 minutes waiting for a parking space. This is especially a problem during the European winter (peak arrivals).”

Private jets were occasionally being diverted to airports such as Trivandrum and Colombo because of a lack of parking space, denying the government a stream of income, he added – “and there’s no standard of parking, it’s like a haystack.”

The “geometry and design of the airport” were fundamental limitations of the current layout, he noted, but both the current and previous governments were financially unable to invest the significant amount of money required to repair and upgrade the facility.

“In 2006 the former government contracted UK company Scott Wilson to draw up a masterplan, with three options costing US$300 million. The government could not find the funding to go ahead with it,” he said.

“We’re at a crossroads – either it gets privatised now, or it never does. It needs urgent and necessary expansion, and the runway needs to be repaired,” the source explained.

“If people do not agree with the airport being privatised like this, they should come to the bargaining table with something better – there are many multi-millionaires in Male’ who could co-operate on this,” he said.

“It’s not about airport revenue – plenty of countries privatise their airports. But in the Maldives the whole economy is completely dependent on incoming tourists, and most of the [financial] benefits are downstream [at resorts]. At the end of the day the country benefits by having a good airport.”

Not in national interest: opposition

Yesterday evening a coalition of opposition parties, including the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party DRP), the People’s Alliance (PA), the Dhivehi Qaumee Party (DQP) and the Jumhooree Party (JP), accused the government of acting outside the national interest over the privatisation of Male’ International Airport, and signed an agreement to try and halt the process “inside or outside parliament” after the government accepted a bid from GMR-KLIA.

This afternoon a planned signing ceremony at the President’s Office in front of assembled media was first postponed and then reschedued for Wednesday, with Chairman of the Privatisation Committee Mahmood Razee claiming that the “documents were still pending.”

Daily newspaper Haveeru reported that the signing was cancelled because of disputes among board members of the incumbent airport operator, Maldives Airports Company Limited (MACL), over who would sign the document.

The GMR-KLIA bid accepted by the government will involve an upfront payment of US$78 million and one percent of the airport’s profit until 2014, increasing to 10 percent from 2015 to 2035. GMR will also pay 15 percent of fuel trade revenues to the government in the first four years, and 27 percent from 2015 to 2035.

The two other bids – from Turkish TAV Airports Holdings Company/French Airports De Paris and Swiss Flughafen Zurich AG/GVK Airport Developers – involved substantially less upfront sums but 2-3 times the profit sharing over the life of the agreement.

The statement signed by the oppositition parties condemning the government’s decision to give the airport’s management in control of a foreign company, said the decision was “not made with the intention of benefiting the country’s economy” and that they would seek legal advice.

“[The airport] is one of the most valuable assets of the Maldives and it has a direct link to the independence of the state,” the statement said.

Last week DRP Deputy Leader Ibrahim Shareef accused the government of pushing the privatisation deal through without seeking approval from parliament, and said the DRP “will not honour this type of shady deal” if returned to power in 2013.

Razee meanwhile hit back at the opposition’s unspecified allegations of corruption, explaining that the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) had been involved in the privatisation process as a transaction advisor since July 2009, “and would certainly not stand by if conduct was improper.”

“We started this process in December 2008. It was not something we thought up yesterday,” Razee said.

IFC representatives said they would not comment on the matter.

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Woman on Kinbidhoo attempts suicide after death of 10 month-old child

An Indian woman living on the island of Kinbidhoo in Thaa Atoll has been admitted to hospital after allegedly smothering her 10 month child and attempting suicide in Kinbidhoo this afternoon, an island official has claimed.

The woman was discovered by people on the island and rescued before she could kill herself, the official told Minivan News.

”Her husband is from Kinbidhoo, he works in the island court as a court secretary. She is quite young,” he said. ”They both had some disputes two days ago and it continued until today.”

”After killing the child she attempted to kill herself, but people discovered her and rescued her,” he alleged. ”She was taken to the health centre as she was in a bad condition. The health centre said that she had taken pills and tried to hang herself.”

Police Sub-Inspector Ahmed Shiyam confirmed the woman was hospitalised in Kinbidhoo health centre, but said it was too early to establish murder charges.

”We cannot say whether the child was murdered yet,” said Shiyam. ”There are more investigations to be conducted.”

He declined to give more information as the investigation was ongoing.

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“People should be free to pray according to any sect of Islam”, says Adhaalath president

The Islamic Ministry and the Adhaalath party have expressed concern over certain amendments proposed in the religious unity act by Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (DRP) MP Dr Afrasheem Ali.

The Islamic Ministry on its website said that while the amendment bill was useful, it was concerned about an article stating that the Shafi sect should be enshrined as the basis of Islam in the Maldives.

The Islamic Ministry described the article as “unIslamic”, and that it was against the constitution of the Maldives.

Furthermore, the ministry called on parliament to gather more information and to cite that information when amending the proposed bill during the committee stage.

The ministry said that “many scholars” were concerned over the amendment proposed to make the Shafi sect the main basis of Islam in the Maldives.

Sheikh Hussein Rasheed, President of the Adhaalath Party, refuted the article which making the Shafi sect the official sect of the Maldives.

”People should have the freedom to pray according to any sect [of Islam] they wish,” said Sheikh Hussein. ”There are many people in the Maldives who follows different sects when worshiping.”

Sheikh Hussein said that although the bill was passed, ”nobody will follow it.”

”Until 1997, on the island where Dr Afrasheem comes from, they did not perform the Friday prayers because according to the Shafi sect there should be a minimum of 40 people in order to conduct them,” he said. ”So if it becomes a law to follow the Shafi sect, again we are going back to those days.”

He said that Dr Afrasheem’s comment in parliament that in Malaysia people followed the Shafi sect was “a big lie.”

”In Malaysia people perform prayers according other sects as well,” Sheikh Hussein said.

He said that in many other Islamic countries there were no laws that specified which sect to follow.

”Laws can’t force people to follow a specific sect – people should be rather trained to follow a specific sect,” he said. ”I strongly refuse that part of the amendment bill.”

On May 21, Dr Afrasheem Ali presented a bill to amend the religious unity act.

Dr Afrasheem said that social unity among Maldivians was weaker than it had been in the past.

”One reason for this [disruption] is issues of religion, particularly disputes over worship and [scholars] criticising each other,” said Dr Afrasheem.

He proposed that the Shafi sect be chosen as the basis of Islam in the Maldives.

”I selected the Shafi sect because it is the sect most friendly, most accepted and most widely followed sect in Islam,” he said.

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Extremism impacting Maldivian women: Inter Press report

Authorities in the Maldives view women’s issues as a core human rights problem and are keen to tackle them head on, but cultural and religious issues often stand in the way, according to an Inter Press Service report by Feizal Samath.

‘No doubt the government of President Mohamed Nasheed recognises many problems and is willing to tackle them, but there’s limited ability to do so because of deep-rooted cultural and religious issues,’ according to a Maldivian journalist, who declined to be named.

Member of parliament Eva Abdulla, who belongs to Nasheed’s Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) — which won power in May 2009, thus ending the 30- year-old reign of dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom — said the government firmly believes in affirmative action policies benefiting women.

‘The President has called for gender mainstreaming in both formulating and implementing government policies,’ she said. She stressed, however, that lack of staff and resources are undermining Nasheed’s good intentions.

Particularly worrying, she said, is the growing religious extremism in the Maldives and its impact on the lives of Maldivian women, who comprise around 48 percent of the country’s population of around 340,000.

‘Religion is all too often used as an excuse to limit women,’ she added.

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