Single private borrower lowers Maldives credit rating, and wants to borrow more: Assad

02 Jul 2010, 12:59 PM
A. R. Abdulla
The country’s ability to borrow money has been made more difficult by a Majlis member borrowing a large sum of money and lowering the country’s credit rating, said the state minister for finance Ahmed Assad at the President’s Office press conference yesterday. Now that person has made a request to the government to give him a ‘letter of no objection’ to borrow a further large sum, he said.
Assad refused to name the Majlis member at the conference but it is widely assumed in the Maldivian media that the Majlis member is Gasim Ibrahim.
The European Investment Bank is complaining that the country is already in default, said Assad, and because of that complaint, the Maldivian government is having difficulty borrowing money and the country is in serious financial difficulties. It is jeopardising the government’s ability to borrow money for important projects like housing, he said.
The Majlis has left a tax bill in committee for a whole year, along with around 30 other bills which the executive government has submitted, said MDP MP Eva Abdulla last night on TV Maldives’ Rajje Miadhu (Maldives Today) current affairs program. These bills were designed to provide services to the people which were promised during the presidential election, she said, and instead of doing anything to pass the bills, the opposition has been amending existing legislation to remove the powers of the president.

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