Time for economic reforms

I have been following the Subprime Mortgage crisis from its very beginning in August 2007, partly because I love economics and partly because I’m doing a banking and international finance course. I watched what initially started as a mortgage crisis in USA turn into a financial crisis bringing down many well renowned Investment banks like Bear Stern and Laymen Brothers, before evolving into a full fledged economic crisis, threatening economies globally. I realized the gravity of the crisis by then and tried to bring the topic into the Maldivian blog sphere, but we were too deeply involved in politics. It seemed that nothing was more important than the political chaos in our country. So the efforts made by some few bloggers to bring the spot light on to the financial crisis and our economy went without a fruit.

Today, with the severe dollar shortage in our economy, topics concerning our economy have gained some leverage in Maldivian public forums. More articles conveying the global economic conditions are appearing on our daily newspapers and some local journalists have joined some few bloggers in reflecting upon these events with regards to our local economy.

For too long, we have been taking our economy for granted. Our Rufiyaa was pegged with US dollar under a fixed exchange rate regime and it has been serving us well as often acknowledged by international institutions like IMF. But we have forgotten the reasons why the peg with dollar was serving us well. So even when our economy significantly went out of alignment with the US economy still we are continuing to keep our faith in this exchange rate regime which served us so well in the past.

We have been building our economy on a highly concentrated industrial base, disregarding the fact that it can completely sabotage our economy in case of an external shock. We were too passionate in developing the tourism sector while other strategic industries like farming and fishing went down gradually. We could have found many other economically viable ways of using our uninhabited islands rather than building resorts on all of them, if we really gave a damn about it.

Even when the government is in the hands of a relatively conservative party, still there seems to be a very limited chance of seeing some Government Business Enterprises being privatised completely. Without more listed companies our Infant Stock market and securities trading will be heading nowhere.

We have seen major political reforms in our nation. So I think it’s time for us now, to think about our economy and bring some fundamental economic reforms.

EVALUATING THE CANDIDATES FOR MAJLIS ELECTION

Even though the date of the general election is yet to be determined, we are seeing many candidates announcing their interest to run in the election and actively campaigning in their respective constituencies. Some wealthy business entrepreneurs had long been preparing for the big showdown by sponsoring various social activities – especially sporting events organized by youths – and by being surprisingly generous in their philanthropic activities. Now it’s time for us – voters – to evaluate the candidates and decide who the most suitable candidate is.

From what I have observed so far, still only few people seriously think about what the elected representatives do in the majlis when they decide the candidate to vote for. Many sees Majlis membership as a reward to the wealthy people who had used their fat wallets to help them in times of need and to those who financially backed them in sporting events and other similar social activities. In my view such people’s thinking is not wrong to some extent as we have to acknowledge and appreciate such actions of wealthy people. However I think we are going too far when we think such actions of them alone deserves them our vote to be majlis members.

If these people are helping the society just out of their love and affection to the society or out of their commitment to the development of the islands, then they will keep on helping us even if they are not elected to the majlis. Under such circumstances they don’t need to be rewarded by giving the chance to represent us in the majlis.

So while agreeing that the material support from a candidate in the past to the society and to the development of the island should be considered while deciding who is the best candidate, I think we should not take that as the sole criteria in evaluating our candidates. First of all we should think about the nature of the work they do in the majlis and see which candidate is more capable of undertaking works of that nature. We are not trying to elect welfare officers. We are trying to elect our representatives to one of the most respectable institutions in our nation and to an important pillar in a true democracy.