Q: China’s Belt and Road Initiative [BRI] has backed major infrastructure projects in the Maldives, but has also contributed to rising levels of sovereign debt for the country. The new government, led by president Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, which came into office in November 2018, has estimated that total Chinese debt might end up totalling $3bn, about two-thirds of the national GDP. How are you going to deal with this moving forward?
A: We do recognise that we have high debt levels, and right now we are making plans to deal with this issue. We didn’t need some of the projects that were sponsored by China within the framework of the BRI. We have a good relationship with the Chinese government and our foreign affairs minister will be in Beijing to renegotiate some of these BRI projects and hopefully restructure some of the loans previously provided by the Chinese government. At the same time, we have plans to [repay] some of the high-yield bonds we have on the books by [receiving] low-cost concessional loans [from] governments and institutions [other than China].
