Public Sector

The unsustainable food subsidy

2 min read
The Maldivian government spent MVR339.2 million in 2015, and MVR291.9 million in 2016 on subsidies for rice, flour and sugar. The government controls prices at MVR5.50 per kilogram for rice...

The National Minimum Wage

5 min read
Monday, 8 November 2021, was a landmark day for the Maldives. Published in the 50th Volume, Issue 289 of the Maldivian Gazette, a minimum wage was mandated for the first...

Ameer on Budget 2022

8 min read
With the new budget announced earlier this week, MFR welcomed the opportunity to sit down the with the chief architect of the new, ambitious budget plan, Minister of Finance, Ibrahim...

Democracy hijacked: Broken promises

5 min read
Democracy has been quite an elusive dream, introduced, as reinforced upon us in recent times, to the Maldivian people in the 2000s by Mohamed Nasheed. Charismatic, driven, and supposedly not...

MFR Summaries: Budget Expenditures 2022

3 min read
Minister of Finance, Ibrahim Ameer, presented the national budget for 2022 to parliament last week, with expenditure estimated at  MVR36.925 billion. The projected revenue and grants for the year is...

Economic outlook 2022

3 min read
The Government of Maldives’ new estimates for the GDP growth rate for 2021 is at 31.6 percent, while the previous estimate was at 13.5 percent. The latest forecasts of the...

Fiscal sustainability: 2022 and beyond

4 min read
Minister of Finance Ibrahim Ameer on 31 October submitted a MVR36.925 billion budget to the parliament. The minister said that although the Maldivian economy is recovering strongly, with the measures...

The decentralisation dream

6 min read
Decentralisation is a political ideology. Some administrations have sought more centralised, infrastructure development, while others aim to create a synergistic system with central hubs across the archipelago, while yet others...