Male’, Maldives – The next six months will be tough on Maldives, reveals Economic Minister of the country Fayyaz Ismail.
Speaking at the “Raajje Miadhu” programme of local media outlet PSM, Fayyaz stated that the difficulties faced by the world right now, is the biggest challenge since the World War II.
Getting in to detail, Fayyaz revealed that the Covid-19 pandemic is not just faced by the Maldives, but in fact, the entire world, which has left many countries with the borders closed, ultimately stopping tourists to travel into the Maldives. Due to this, the Maldivian economy has come to a complete stand still as the country’s economy is heavily dependent on the tourism industry, revealed Fayyaz.
“I believe that the next six to eight months would be very tough.” Fayyaz said.
Also revealed that this is the biggest economic challenge the country has faced thus far and that although it was previously believed that the country could soon recover from it, it is now believed that the economy would go down by -11 percent.
“Before Covid was discovered, we expected a growth in GDP by 7.5 percent. Now that is expected to go down by minus 11 percent, which is a huge decrease.” The Minister explained.
He further explained that Maldives is expected to recover and reach the level at which the country was prior to Covid, by 2022 and that the government plans to work to diversify the country’s economy and reduce the dependency on tourism.
