Crisis-hit Maldives secures QatarI investment OF $8.8bn
Cash-strapped Maldives has signed a deal with a Dubai-based company to establish an $8.8bn investment zone to diversify the tourism hotspot into a 'financial freezone,' the government said on Monday.
The announcement followed an agreement signed late Sunday with MBS Global Investments, a company owned by Qatar's Sheikh Nayef bin Eid Al Thani.
President Mohamed Muizzu's office said in a statement that the Maldives International Financial Centre (MIFC) will include three residential and office towers, a convention centre, and hotels.
'It will position Male as the premier global business and financial hub in the Indian Ocean,' read the statement, adding it would allow the Indian Ocean archipelago to 'diversify beyond tourism.'
The MIFC, in a statement, said the centre will cover an area of 780,000 sqft. Over 6,500 people are expected to stay in the region, with 35,000 visitors expected daily.
MIFC's main centre will be a convention centre with a capacity of 3,500 people. International conferences, cultural events, and hackathons promoting innovation are among the events planned to be held here.
The plan also includes three residential and office towers, designed for international main and regional offices. Also included are high-end branded residences, popular hotel chains, a comprehensive retail experience, an oceanographic museum, a mosque, and educational facilities, including an international school.
Renowned architect Gianni Ranaulo designed the project.
The $6.5bn economy of the Maldives has been facing foreign exchange shortages since the Covid-19 pandemic and has been warned of a potential foreign debt crisis.
The MIFC Zone will have no residency requirements and offer 'no corporate tax, tax-free inheritance and privacy,' the statement added.
Set to be completed by 2030, its projected revenue is set to be 'well over $1bn by the fifth year,' according to the government.
In February, the IMF said the Maldives required 'urgent and stronger' fiscal consolidation to stabilise its troubled economy, despite a thriving tourism industry.
The upmarket holiday destination expects its economy to grow by 5% in 2025, but the IMF warned that the sunny outlook masked significant risks.
The tiny nation declined an International Monetary Fund bailout loan late last year, with the government instead announcing severe spending cuts. Muizzu has taken a 50% pay cut, and introduced a mandatory 10% pay cut across most public sector jobs.
In September, the Maldives described its financial difficulties as 'temporary' and said it had no plans to seek a bailout, despite warnings of a possible sovereign default.
The Maldives is on the frontline of the battle against global warming, which could raise sea levels and swamp the nation of 1,192 tiny coral islands scattered across the equator.
China and India are the two largest bilateral lenders. Beijing has pledged further funding since Muizzu's 2023 election victory, with the president thanking China for its 'selfless assistance' in providing development funds.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomed Muizzu in New Delhi in October, before announcing financial support to bolster the archipelago's struggling economy.
Official data showed the Maldives' foreign debt stood at $3.37bn in the first quarter of 2024, equivalent to around 45% of GDP.
China accounted for about 20% of the external debt, while India held just under 18%.
---
Make sure to check out our social media to keep track of the latest content.
Instagram - @qatarliving
X - @qatarliving
Facebook - Qatar Living
YouTube - qatarlivingofficial
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
10 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Hunger relief group says it's facing a $2.5 million budget shortfall due to federal cuts
Feeding South Dakota's Rapid City location on May 30, 2025. (Seth Tupper/South Dakota Searchlight) South Dakota's largest hunger-relief organization says it faces a $2.5 million budget shortfall next year because of President Donald Trump's federal funding cuts. Feeding South Dakota CEO Lori Dykstra addressed lawmakers on a budget committee Friday in Pierre. She said the group has already cut the amount of food it provides and has merged distribution sites. She warned that unless the funding gap is filled, 21 food distribution events in 15 counties will be eliminated, affecting 3,400 families and eliminating more than 1.7 million meals annually. 'We're not here to say whether or not the federal funding decisions are right or wrong,' Dykstra said. 'We're just letting you know that one of the unintentional consequences is that the food safety net for Feeding South Dakota and for all of your neighbors facing hunger is at risk.' The cuts come from the rollback of federal aid by the Trump administration, particularly programs begun during the COVID-19 pandemic to help the U.S. Department of Agriculture support food distribution. Dykstra said the group must now find $2.5 million to replace lost USDA support in fiscal year 2026, which begins July 1, or make cuts. Dykstra also warned that if the current budget reconciliation legislation in Congress is enacted, the state could be on the hook for 5% of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits and a larger share of SNAP administrative costs, adding up to a possible $13 million total state obligation. SNAP participants can use their benefits to purchase food. 'SNAP benefits get people out of food lines,' she said. 'So, it's either they're in the food bank line or they're in the grocery store.' Dykstra said 113,000 South Dakotans are food insecure, meaning they are uncertain about where their next meal will come from, often forced to skip meals, eat less, or purchase cheaper, less nutritious food. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
10 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The Saga Of RFK Jr., Dr. Oz, And The Possibly Infectious Canadian Ostrich Wobble
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has brought us so much, including sext scandals, bulls**t citations (more on that below), and admittedly bad medical advice. Now, the gravelly voiced political scion wants to bless us with flightless birds that are quite possibly infected with a deadly virus. The birds in question are about 400 ostriches that are currently living on a farm in Canada's western British Columbia province. (I was today years old when I learned that a group of ostriches is apparently called a 'wobble.') This particular wobble was hit with a bird flu epidemic last last year that claimed the lives of 69 ostriches. Not very nice. Given concerns that bird flu, or H5N1, has spread to humans and could cause a major outbreak, officials in Canada have ordered the owners to kill the surviving members of the wobble. (I am taking every opportunity I can to use the word 'wobble' here because I find it inherently amusing.) Karen Espersen and Dave Bilinski, who run Universal Ostrich Farms — which is home to the aforementioned wobble — have pushed back and argued that studying the birds could be beneficial. Most veterinarians and experts do not agree with this take, and the Canadian courts have not either. The fact scientists see the wobble as a public health threat has not deterred the Canadian right, which has turned the ostriches into something of a cause célèbre. Over on Facebook (of course), Esperson has styled herself as a 'digital creator' and 'leader in the ostrich industry in Canada.' In between making posts about sleeping among the possibly infected birds, Esperson has tried to amp up her support. 'We need people to come and surround our farm,' Esperson wrote on May 13. The call to action has apparently resulted in flag-waving busloads reminiscent of the anti-COVID-mandate trucker convoy protests that galvanized the Canadian right prior to its losses in this year's elections, which were widely seen as a referendum on President Trump. It also inspired some members of the Trump administration to get involved in yet another example of their efforts to connect with the global right wing. Last week, Kennedy sent a letter to Canadian officials urging them to spare the wobble and study it. Dr. Mehmet Oz, the former reality television star who is Trump's administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, took things a step further and offered to house the animals on his massive Florida ranch. So far, Canada has seemingly remained unmoved by these appeals. For her part, Esperson has tried to co-opt liberal-coded language to bring them on board. Her posts about the standoff included one meme with a bold declaration: 'I IDENTIFY AS OSTRICH' — Hunter Walker A preview of what Republicans are up against as they prepare to wrestle the Big, Beautiful bill through the Senate. A look at the Trump administration's often comically misguided reliance on AI. A suggestion that we take the long view on society's recent lurch toward ultranationalism and isolationism. 'We're all going to die,' Sen. Joni Ernst reminds us. Let's dig in. The Senate is preparing to take up the House-passed reconciliation package starting next week. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) will have to coordinate opposing demands for changes to the bill from the senators in his caucus, just as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had to in the House. Some are asking for more spending cuts than what the House bill included in order, they say, to shrink the amount by which the bill would increase the deficit. Others are unhappy with the cuts to Medicaid and the rollback of the Biden-era clean energy tax cuts. Thune can only lose three votes, so he will have to walk a fine line to find a compromise for those in his caucus. But he will also have to avoid making major changes to the package, because those changes would then have to be voted on again by the House. Any change could backfire, breaking the delicate balance on which Johnson spent weeks building the bill. So far, it is unclear if Senate Republicans will hold committee markup hearings or take the package straight to the Senate floor, where senators would still have the opportunity to make changes. Markup hearings would also mean Democrats could force the members on each committee to take uncomfortable votes on amendments they propose to specific provisions, getting Republicans on the record for their stance around the unpopular cuts to the safety net programs. 'Why would we subject ourselves to a whole bunch of amendments from Democrats when the Republican members in various committees certainly have all the opportunity… to have their say without needing to go through the brain damage of an official markup?' Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said according to Punchbowl. We will know more in the coming days, but considering the pushback House Republicans received from the public during their hearings, Senate Republicans could very well skip that step and avoid the spectacle. — Emine Yücel In mid May, the Trump administration rolled out its 'MAHA report,' a purported effort to get to the bottom of America's poor health outcomes. The report was cast as a collaboration between various Cabinet secretaries and advisors, including, of course, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services. As you likely already know, it now appears that an AI chatbot was among the report's true authors. The DC news outlet NOTUS first determined on Thursday that many of the studies referenced in the report don't exist. The report misstated the findings of others. In some cases, the report cited real researchers, but claimed they had authored papers or come to conclusions they had not. The Washington Post soon sought an answer to the obvious question, and found Chat GPT appears to be at least partially to blame. Some of the URLs cited, the Post found, include 'oaicite,' a marker inserted into citations generated by OpenAI, the company behind Chat GPT. This isn't the first time the administration has turned to AI to help it complete its work on time, a move more expected of high school students than advisors to the president. DOGE reportedly used a Meta AI model to review federal workers' Elon Musk-demanded lists of the five things they had done that week. Trump's mathematically unsound 'liberation day' tariffs were widely speculated to be the work of artificial intelligence, making use of a formula that many AI chatbots recommend. 'A number of X users have realized that if you ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Grok for an 'easy' way to solve trade deficits and put the US on 'an even playing field,' they'll give you a version of this 'deficit divided by exports' formula with remarkable consistency,' the Verge reported. (Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick tried to laugh off the possibility AI was involved during a Face the Nation interview.) Tech CEOs flood us with increasingly dire warnings of what their products will do to our society: AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white collar jobs in five years, Anthropic's CEO claimed in a round of media appearances this week. But, for now, it appears these products are not quite ready to replace government experts. At least, not with the prompts administration officials have been giving them. — John Light We might have imagined that, with the rise of the internet and the ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, we'd move toward a more open, dynamic world. Yet, in 2025, the opposite appears to be the case: a cycle of contraction. In the United States, the Trump administration is clamping down on immigration in the name of border security, safety and 'Western values.' Italy's right-wing government recently restricted immigration, paring back its long-standing Jure Sanguinis policy through which someone — me, for example — could claim citizenship by demonstrating an unbroken chain from my great-grandpa, who emigrated to America, to myself. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Cabinet this week announced its intent to abolish a fast-track-to-citizenship program in an attempt to restrict migration into Germany. Earlier this month, the UK's Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the desire to end what he called the 'failed experiment in open borders.' Where to begin? Border security is a fraught issue and the concerns are not exclusive to the right, as Starmer illustrates. But, in the end, we all lose. The demonization of immigrants in the name of safety, or the even greater canard of 'protecting culture,' only serves to weaken the human spirit. It becomes more difficult to share wisdom and learn about the rich and glorious constellation of lifeways that exist. We doom people to lives they don't want to live and foreclose opportunities that may exist elsewhere. It's easy to forget that the 'nation state' as we conceive of it didn't exist until the 16th century. The indigenous peoples of America used to range for hundreds of miles, learning from and trading with others. It's not a given that the world will move, linearly, toward greater and greater interconnectedness and integration, as many predicted just a decade ago. As technological innovation expands our abilities to communicate and to travel, this thinking went, the world should get smaller. Cultures should synthesize and understanding of the other should deepen. But that progress — a word some may take issue with — is anything but linear. If you pick a point in time long ago and compare it to today, it may appear that way. But hidden within the millennia and centuries and decades are cycles of greater and lesser freedom of movement and greater and lesser acceptance of other cultures. In many ways, recent years see us trending toward a more static, staid way of life. I tend to believe these things are cyclical, this trend won't last forever. But that doesn't necessarily help in the short run for those of us alive right now. — Joe Ragazzo 'Well, we're all going to die.' That was Sen. Joni Ernst's (R-IA) response this week when she was confronted by constituents shouting at her during a town hall that cuts to Medicaid and SNAP would cause people to die. The Iowans were, of course, referring to the reconciliation package that the House passed last week, adding additional, last-minute Medicaid cuts to appease House Freedom Caucus members who were threatening to sink the bill without steeper cuts to shrink the amount by which the bill would increase the deficit. Ernst's response received raucous pushback from the crowd. 'For heaven's sakes. For heaven's sakes, folks,' Ernst continued. 'What you don't want to do is listen to me when I say that we are going to focus on those that are most vulnerable. Those that meet the eligibility requirements for Medicaid, we will protect. We will protect them.' But, as we've been reporting, the massive cuts in the bill will lead to millions losing their health care coverage. — Emine Yücel
Yahoo
10 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Kremlin launches digital rouble to control Russians – Ukraine's Defence Intelligence
Defence Intelligence of Ukraine has reported on "another step by the criminal regime in Moscow aimed at strengthening total control over its own population" — the introduction of a digital rouble. Source: Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU); Latvia-based Russian media outlet Meduza Details: Intelligence reports show that starting in early 2026, Russian state employees will begin to receive their salaries in "digital roubles". DIU expects that Russia will completely control the circulation of the virtual rouble: it will track every transaction, and the spending of digital roubles will be limited by the citizen's place of residence or the type of goods. Moreover, intelligence analysis shows that the Kremlin regime will be able to block citizens' accounts without a court decision and automatically deduct taxes and fines from them. The Russian media outlet Meduza writes that the digital rouble is a new form of Russian currency on par with cash and non-cash roubles. Each digital rouble in the Russian Federation will be assigned a unique code (similar to the series and number on banknotes). Electronic money will be stored in electronic wallets opened on a specially designed platform of the Central Bank. Russians say that the digital rouble has many advantages. In particular, if a bank goes bankrupt, people will not lose their money. Also, the digital rouble will allegedly significantly reduce the cost of money transfers, lower commissions for businesses, etc. Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
