Male’, Maldives – The central bank of Maldives, Maldives Monitory Authority (MMA) has said that there are visible indications that the countries economy is improving after the hit it took with Covid-19.
In an announcement of increasing the amount of US dollar sales to commercial banks, the central bank stated that it has gotten USD 354 million until now to be utilized to get out of the financial challenges faced by the economy due to the Covid-19 pandemic which crippled the tourism sector of Maldives. The bank said that it decided to increase the amount of dollar sales to commercial banks as a means to mitigate the pressure on foreign money availability which is needed for import of basic necessities.
The announcement also noted the opening of the national borders on July 15, 2020 and the arrival of 18,918 tourists until the end of September and that on average the tourists stayed for nine days compared to the six days which tourists spend in last year September. It also added that other sectors were slowly improving as well but did not mention the specific sectors.
According to the quarterly GDP summery of the national accounts report published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in September, the GDP growth rate of the Maldivian economy for the second quarter of the year has gone down by -51.6 percent compared to the same quarter of 2019 due to the action taken against the Covid-19 pandemic.
