Nasheed vows to review all Sino-Maldives pacts following Yameen's ouster

NEW DELHI: Md Nasheed former Maldives President and close ally of President Ibu Solih has declared to review all the agreements that Maldives had signed with China under Yameen's five-year rule between 2013-2018, hours after his MDP won the Presidential polls.

"We have a joint manifesto. We have issues, we have ideas agreed upon. I think we have to review all the agreements we had with China. We have to review them and see what is due," Nasheed told an international news agency hours after Solih unseated Yameen which seemed unthinkable even on the polling day.

These remarks are unlikely to please Beijing which had invested heavily in Maldives. It took over 24 hours to congratulate Solih.


"China and Maldives enjoy traditional friendship and in recent years the two countries maintained sound momentum and conducted mutual beneficial cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road and achieved outstanding outcomes,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said in a response to a question in Beijing on Monday.
“We are willing to work with the Maldives to consolidate our traditional friendship and deepen our cooperation to the benefit of the people of both the nations," Geng noted.

In response to another question, Geng hoped that the new government will respect the FTA signed between China and Maldives, during Yameen’s tenure.

“As to the FTA signed between China and Maldives…we hope the Maldives will maintain consistency and stability of their policy and create an enabling environment for Chinese enterprises operation in the Maldives”.

In its congratulatory message, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said it respected the choice of the people of Maldives, and hoped that the country “can maintain stability and development”.

China and Maldives had signed a FTA last September. “China will work with Maldives to ensure the sound implementation of FTA and expand trade and investment cooperation between both the sides for the greater benefit and development of people of both the nations,” Geng observed.

Maldives, a small economy heavily reliant on tourism, is one of the most at-risk countries of any involved with the BRI to the distress of debt, said the Center for Global Development, a Washington DC-based think-tank tracking the initiative.

Chinese loans for projects already account for around 70 percent of the Maldives’ national debt. In 2014, China began to develop major infrastructure projects. One is a bridge linking the capital Male to a nearby island. The other is an expansion of the capital’s airport, a project awarded to a Chinese company in 2014. The Maldives has also leased an uninhabited island (Feydhoo Finolhu) to a Chinese enterprise for 50 years at a price of around $4 million, with plans to develop infrastructure for tourism. China is also constructing a 25-storey apartment complex and hospital in the Maldives.

The Maldives’ economy has grown by an average of 6 percent a year for the last five years, buoyed by tourism and construction, according to Fitch.