Importers concerned about dollar shortage
06 Oct 2010, 8:16 PM
The growing dollar shortage in the Maldives has raised alarm among several commodity import businesses operating in Male’ today, after at least one bank ceased to allow the free transfer of rufiya into dollar accounts.
“The problem we have is that local buyers pay us in rufiya, but our bank has now stopped allowing us to transfer this into our US dollar account,” the manager of one enterprise told Minivan News today.
“Our overseas suppliers have to be paid in dollars. How are you meant to run a business in this place? Surely they can’t go on like this?”
The Maldives grapples with a foreign currency deficit due to a heavy import-export imbalance. Goods from overseas must be purchased with foreign currency, but the Maldives has little ability to earn this outside the resort industry.
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