The Minister of Finance Moosa Zameer on Monday assured that no residential island will be left behind from development projects in the state budget for 2025.
He had made the remarks at the parliament’s Monday sitting, where he attended to provide information on the ongoing debate on the state budget for next year.
Some lawmakers raised concerns about the stalled development projects in some of the islands as well as the government’s failure to commence new projects in certain sectors. These MPs further expressed concern that the budget for next year had not specified planned projects for the islands in 2025.
Zameer, in response, said that previous budgets listed several projects despite funds not being allocated for them.
“As I have said before at the Budget Committee, when projects are commenced with a small budget, many of them end up stalled and in the pipeline. This is either due to lack of budget or cash flow. The other reason is due to incompetence of the contractor,” the minister said.
He had pointed out that the Maldives Transport and Contracting Company (MTCC) was awarded projects almost on a daily basis, with projects racking up MVR 18 billion in worth with no way to finance them.
“With consideration of all these matters, project fund allocation was done this way to proceed with projects that are on the President’s priority list. What I want to assure is that no island is left behind in the priority list we currently have,” Zameer added.