Good morning, the President of International Federation of Asian and Western Pacific Constructors’ Association, the board members of Maldives Construction Association, all the companies, businessmen, friends and delegates gathered here;
I would like to welcome you to the Maldives and I would want you to, as everyone else here, enjoy the best of the Maldives.
This country in the past few years have gone through a number of changes and a number of transformations. Recently we just had our first multiparty elections. We have been able to have a smooth transfer of power, and we have been able to, in a sense, consolidate democracy fairly well in the course of last year. Of course, we have number of challenges and I am sure that we can meet these challenges head-on and come out as a winning nation. We have all the convictions. We have all the resolve and we are on the path. And we hope that we will be able to achieve our good intentions.
Our businesses our policies and intentions are very clear. We are a centre-right government and we want to less government – we want more business and less government. In the past this country has been one like many others, in the sense, only with government. Ownership of government industries and business in the country has been very extensive and government has always had a bigger stake than the private sector in almost all economic activity. We want to transform that. We want to change it into a more business friendly and less government country. We are in the process of doing that. In order to achieve that, we have entered into number of programs. We have in fact voluntarily entered into a IMF macro economic program. In many cases an IMF program is a program we thought or we feel a program imposed upon a country. But in our case, I would like to assure you this program is our program. Before we formed our government we had always advocated for exactly the fiscal discipline that an IMF program would require.
We have been advocating in this government, we have been advocating living within our means. And we are now geared toward these goals and we feel that we will be able to achieve them in very near future.
The Maldives have been good for business for a very long time. Our main businesses activities have been tourism and fishing. If you have a look at or even ask anyone, this would be very obvious. The kind of returns from tourism industry has been very, very lucrative. And this industry has been vibrant and resilient and it has always bounced back from downturns. We have had a number of downturns – we have had the Gulf war; we’ve had 9/11; we’ve had a tsunami and again we have had these recession years. We are again bouncing back from recession. The industry is very resilient to shocks. We have now experienced that tourist arrivals are again on the rise and in the third quarter we will be back on your feet again and back to our normal business.
Because we are in this IMF macro economic program, we have been fortunate to have access to number of international finance organizations. The World Bank and its investment bank IFC is willing to lend to the Maldives. Finances are available for any good project in the Maldives. Similarly, finances are available for the Islamic corporation for the development which is the Islamic Development Bank’s investment wing. Finance is also available through European Investment Bank and number of other Japanese institutions.
We believe we have been able to position our economy and ourselves, our country in the international community in a manner where finance is more receptive for investments in this country. Also investments in the tourism as traditionally or even recently – more than traditionally recently - entry into that industry has been very high. Investments have to be very big for people to be able to engage in tourism as it is happening right now. There are many reasons for this many advantages and disadvantages because of this high entry cost.
We would like to be able to be more flexible. We have a program to introduce a mid-market in tourism. Right now the more prominent markets are the high-end markets therefore, the tourists that arrive in the Maldives are limited to that segment of market in our markets. Our main markets are in Europe and Japan and the type of the tourists that we get or the type of tourist that come to the Maldives has been the upper-end and the high-market tourists. The government has a program to go into a mid-market and therefore we would require a number of mid-market style developments in this country.
Aslam has very eloquently elaborated on a number of opportunities available in the country. His bill comes to few billon dollars and we feel that there is more than that. The government is now in conversation, in negotiation with an Indian company to develop a mega international airport up in the north and a transhipment port up in the north. All these investments together will and can dynamically transform this economy to become a more vibrant economy.
Already our figures or ratios in terms of development ratios are high. We are doing better than most south Asian countries. And we believe that we have scope to do much, much better.
We are seriously engaged in relinquishing state-ownership of a number of industries. The State, as I have mentioned, has been the main share-holder of all State owned industries. Very soon we will relinquish the majority shares in our communication company to Cable & Wireless. And also very soon we will relinquish our majority shares in our Water and Sanitation Company to Hitachi. There are a number of other initiatives and number of other programs where we would like to relinquish government ownership of state owned industries. All these industries are, in a sense, therefore up to sale and you can from here meet the relevant major directors in the boards and be able to conclude your negotiations’, conclude your business here and there, and exchange cheques. We are willing to do it as quickly as possible.
We do not believe in red tape. We do not believe, I keep on stressing that we do not believe in all these nonsense of government. In our mind the business can best be run by businessmen with individual ownership and with the profit motive. We do not see the profit motive to be to be untidy. We welcome it. In our mind development can best be achieved through individual activity and through individual capacity, ownership and entrepreneurship.
I would like to welcome you again. And I am as has been pointed out here…I have just been told that I should be speaking here. So I am sorry that I have not been not able to engage as much as I would like to.
There are number of issues that, I’m sure during the course of the day that you will engage yourselves in conversation with our counterparts, with your government officials and our private sector industry here. Here you have almost all your big companies represented here, especially in the construction sector and therefore I am sure that we would be able to achieve a number of objectives during the course of today and during the course of this forum.
I have been requested and I my-self would like to request the International Federation of Constructors’ Association, if MACI would be, or our construction association would be able to have the 2013 convention here in the Maldives. We believe that we will be bale to have good facilities to make it available, to make it more enjoyable and also make it a happier environment.
We feel that there is a conducive environment for business in the Maldives. This government will not tolerate corruption. This government will be transparent and this government will only deal with the best and this best should come through competition and through pluralism. Pluralism stands at the core of our belief and we believe in competition.
I hope that I am with friends here. And I believe we can achieve a number of our objectives and your objectives though a closer partnership. The government has engaged in a number of public private partnerships. Instead of the government being engaged in delivering services and goods to the people we would rather, if the private public partnership can be more effectively run.
Again, just before I finish I would like you to see what is happening in the Maldives. This country is a 100 percent Muslim country. Not very often you would see a multipart democracy in the Muslim society. I would claim that this is one of the few. We have been able to galvanize the public to political activism, we have been able to have political parties and we have been able to have your first multiparty elections and have a smooth transfer of power. We are building our independent institutions that would be conducive to a sustainable democracy.
Above all, we are also changing our economy to become a more carbon free economy. We believe that new investments in greener technology would be required for any country to come out winning in the next few years. Especially in the next centaury, the winners would be both who are able to change into a carbon free economy, We have programs to build a number of new plants – a number of new renewable energy plants. We also have the intention of refurbishing number of buildings and facilities so that they can become more energy efficient.
So, I just want to add on top of what Aslam has just indicated on the public sector investment programs or our infrastructure development programs. On top of that we would like to see carbon friendly investments in our economy and we would like to see refurbishments of existing plants and existing buildings to make them more energy efficient.
I could go on and on and on, but I will not. And I am sure our privatization committee chair Mr Mahmood Razy who is also our Civil Aviation Minister has a lot to show to you. We have a Invest Maldives department in the Ministry of Economic Development. The intension here is for it to be a one stop agency where you can have the all the information relating to investments in the Maldives and the intention again, as I try to stress is that do we have less government and less red tape.
Thank you very much and have a wonderful time.
