I hate to do this again. But I have to remind my President and fellow countrymen that a billion is an obscenely large number. I honestly can’t understand how we have become a country that’s so excessively engaged in self deceit.
This time around last year our State Minister for FDI was talking about how President’s trip to Italy was going to bring in USD 1 billion worth of investment to this country. Now the president himself seems to be onboard the billion dollar bandwagon.
Mr. President. Sir, your advisors are deceiving you. Any talk of a billion dollar investments coming into Maldives is simply NOT true. It’s nothing but a blatant bald-faced lie! According to the guys at UNCTAD during the decade 1990-2000 we only had an average annual inward FDI inflow of USD 9 million. The figure has never exceeded USD 15 million since.
Sir, I don’t know why your highly qualified advisors so miserably fail when it comes to having an appreciation of the simple arithmetics needed to figure out that an economy that’s entire value hovers around only a billion dollars cannot possibly attract billions of dollars of FDI. Sir, this is commonsense - no 300 feet-tall Sierra redwood is ever going to grow on our tiny islands; no 100 ton blue whale is ever going to be seen swimming in our lagoons; no Carlos Slim Helú is ever going to be born in Maldives. Period.
Sir, I know you like to dream big. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact I as an average citizen of your country admire that quality in my president. But I honestly can’t help being wary of all this frivolous talk about billion dollar phantom investments.
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22 comments:
As much as I'd like to disagree with you on this one... but after running those numbers through a political simulator, the only thing that you are saying left is the truth.
The results of the simulation ended with approximately 10 billion dollars (US$) of investment being injected into the target economy, which then brought in a small-scale "golden age" of commerce.
Seeing no sudden economic growth by means of improved ports, more jobs, more resorts and a vastly improved transport network; I am brought to two conclusions. Either the advisors were lying, or there is no investment coming.
I can relate - why would a rich country would be willing to offer a bunch of up-and-coming Talibanabees the delicious funds?.
naimbe,
it would have been good if you had included the whole story how this has developed. First after the donors conference VP came out and said we received some USD300 million. Then DRP's Mavoataa came out to media and said we only received USD20 million. Then the master of spin Doc shaheed came out to say we got USD 400,000,000. Then finally Anni said yesterday we will get USD 1 billion in three years. This is a big joke. This cant be anymore idiotic than this.
while travellling in Europe rubbing shoulders with EU leaders president nasheed totally forgot that
a. his country has only 300000 people.
b. he is barely five feet tall
c. his country is a highly indebted LDC.
I disagree. Carlos Slim is originally from Huvadhu. Like Shatrughan Sinha. Ambaree Abdu Sattar is from Burma.
There already is a billion dollars in Maldives: in the President's mouth.
i really don't understand the need for these people to showoff. one will say 300mil and another 400mil.
after a while not a word abt it!
who in the right mind makes billion dollar investments in here? i mean have you seen the state of this country?
Agree with you totally Naimbe. And as if to back up his claim the president starts rattling of about the international airports.
Has anyone in the government just for once paused and thought about this? we have a 300,000 population (highly dispersed) and a 700,000 tourism market. and then we are going to have 3 world class international airports?? hello, who the heck are going to be using these airports?? is anyone going to invest 300 million dollars for an airport which sees a couple of wide body flights a day??
but ofcourse, you can let a foregin company come here n sign up to build a world class airport, and give them 10,000 tourist beds in return! u know what they will do then? they will build the resorts and then just for the sake of it build a lousy airport. and then reap all the benifit from the resorts. with a big cut for some senior govt ppl ofcourse!
Out of all the political spin of plausibility, some thing real.
Maldivians need a lot of nationalism and society as a whole involved in the economy. Something like how Germany got out of the huge economic slump after WW1.
Naimbe. good one. As I have said many times before this is the biggest disappointment we had in our entire lifetime. We expected this man to do something for the people. We believed in what he told us. We trusted him. But now this man has become the biggest laughing stock in the whole world.
Just after he became president he told us that he is going to get USD300million within 3 months. Where is that money? Then he said the Chinese government is going to build 25000 houses. Where are the houses? Before that he said Gayoom took 80million dollars of tsunami money. But where is the money is my question? Then he said he is going to build 10000 housing units. God knows where it is. Then he said he wants to build a million dollar wind turbine in gaafau. No sign of it still. This man is just one big mouth. He is the laughing stock of the whole world. Its very very disappointing.
Government of maldives needs to understand that these are just pledges. These pledges would no necessarily realize. We have had many instances like this in the past where pledges were never realized. The are pledges and they always come with conditions attached.
As someone said in minivan Nasheed's government would "go a long way if they give up this spinning strategy and adopt a more realistic and honest strategy. Maldivians are not stupid, they know that is going on".
anon 10:37 - president also forgot that this country is sinking. Who is crazy to dump a billion dollars into a country thats going to literally go down in 50 years.
Telling lies has been the hallmark of this president even before he became president.
is he crazy or am i crazy is enough to believe all this shit? billion dollar president
"Maldivians need a lot of nationalism and society as a whole involved in the economy. Something like how Germany got out of the huge economic slump after WW1."
This is the funniest bit I saw here.. Does anyone remember how the Germans got out of the doldrums after WWI? Yep, they found someone called Hitler who unified the 'Aryan' Germans, and killed and murdered their way across Europe! And, in the end, didn't do Germany much good either, although a lot of them did get very spiffy uniforms for a few years.
We now have a government to be proud of!
From somewhere they seem to have read a Dummies Guide to Lying, or something similar, and seem to have totally disregarded everything in it as they do to anything they've not invented themselves, and are carrying on as if the public is totally nuts and will believe any rubbish they spout.
It might help them to remember, amidst all the make believe, that Maldives was 'pledged' millions of dollars even after the tsunami. Of course some of it did materialise, but all of it?? And that was during a genuine disaster; like someone commented earlier we're now would-be Talibanese.. who wants to really support that?
It's actually worth a sec's thought to remember which country actually pledged the most and what their reputation is huh??
my good sir, blue whale does frequent our lagoon's;http://www.helsinki.fi/~lauhakan/whale/asia/maldives/www_fi.html; http://www.whale-and-dolphin.com/,, if you are wrong about a 100 foot fish, something really wrong with your vision, IMHO one billion is a huge number but not an impossiblity to raise, dont be a cynic!!
keep aside the investments.
look at the maldives judiciary. the most corrupt instituion on earth
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naimbe my friend, have you stopped thinking?
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Hey Naimbe', I've only recently tumbled upon your stuff and its truly remarkable. You're honestly reducing the authorities to monkey poop here, incredibly aptly too.
Maybe all the high posts ought to get a better grasp on valuation and getting their own facts. Like you said, we still don't realize the need for economic security since we've been too busy chasing an unattainable, but mostly inexistent political ideology.
Of all the years of lending and claiming international aid, this country has been unable to designate any of those loans to good use which has not done so much as generate enough returns to pay back half the principal amounts.
Our greatest shortcoming as economists is that we have failed to catapult a considerable amount of our own to the political forefront which is so full of ignorant idiots that its turning into an epidemic far greater than any biological disease.
To be a upright lenient being is to procure a make of openness to the far-out, an cleverness to guardianship undeterminable things beyond your own restrain, that can front you to be shattered in hugely extreme circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something exceedingly important with the get of the honest compulsion: that it is based on a trust in the unpredictable and on a willingness to be exposed; it's based on being more like a shop than like a prize, something somewhat dainty, but whose very particular handsomeness is inseparable from that fragility.
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