MBC Budget shall not be released, says Minister of Finance

Minister of Finance Ahmed Inaz has said today that the budget for the Maldives Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) shall not be released, as the issue of handing over government media outlets currently controlled and run by the government to MBC, a statutory body created by the People’s Majlis to run them, has been disputed issue between the government and the Majlis and is currently awaiting a court decision.

Inaz said that a government company was already running the state media apparatus “in a balanced manner” and that in such a situation, creating a new company to undertake the same duties, be it even by a statute passed by the People’s Majlis, was wastage of public funds. He then promised that MBC budget would be kept on hold till a court decision, stating that the government had that authority.

A Parliament Member questioned Inaz in a Financial Committee meeting today, asking him about the reason for refusing to release the 95 million Rufiyaa budget allocated to MBC although it was a statutorily created body assigned to run the state media outlets in an independent manner. The question of why a 100 million Rufiyaa budget was given to Maldives National Broadcasting Corporation, a government-established company that is currently running state media was also posed. In his answer to these questions, Minister Inaz said that the 100 million Rufiyya was a loan granted to MNBC, and that it was provided in fulfillment of the government responsibility to sustain all public corporations.

When asked why the government refused to allow a budgetary provision mandated by a statute and still salaried too many political posts created by the President, Minister Inaz said that while 40% of the government budget was spent on wages, only 3% of that amount went into paying the salaries of political appointees.

In response to the Minister’s statements, MPs repeatedly stated that the government had an obligation to implement laws passed by the Majlis and that the government had no authority to withhold the budget allocated to MBC, a statutory body created by law to run state media.

While opposition members posed several questions to Minister Inaz, ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) members in the Majlis continuously interrupted the questioning, posing various objections, and kept on advising the Minister not to answer some of the questions.

When asked about a loan provided by the government to a company owned by MDP interim chairperson and former Parliamentary Group Leader Moosa “Reeko” Manik, and about a comfort letter provided by the Ministry of Finance to Reeko’s private company Heavy Load, the Minister declined to give any answers.

Former Television Maldives and Voice of Maldives, two media outlets that had been run by the government since the beginning, have recently being brought under the government-established company MNBC, immediately after the People’s Majlis created MBC, an independent statutory body, to take over the running of these two outlets. The government has rejected to handover the two media outlets to MBC, and the Civil Court has made a decision ordering the government to let MBC take over. However, the government has refused to comply with the Court order and appealed the case, and it is now awaiting decision at appeal level.