MIFCO aims to start weekly disbursements at year’s end

Maldives Industrial Fisheries Company (MIFCO) says it aims to start weekly disbursement of payments to fishermen by the end of this year.

President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu, during his 2023 election campaign, promised to disburse payments to fishermen within 48 hours. Fisheries Minister Ahmed Shiyam said the government has been unable to deliver the promise due to economic constraints.

A spokesperson from MIFCO told Sun on Thursday that the company, following talks with the Fisheries Ministry, is currently making disbursements every two weeks.

He said the company’s goal is to ensure the disbursement does not get delayed beyond that, and to reduce the gap to once a week by the end of this year.

“We told the ministry that we will make disbursements within maximum two weeks. But we are also making disbursements earlier than that, if we can. Our last disbursement was within 12 days,” said the spokesperson.

He said the MIFCO wants to be able to eventually make daily disbursements.

In an episode of SSTV’s ‘Baaru Hathareh’ earlier this week, Fisheries Ministry’s director, Ahmed Shifaz said given that the fish purchase rate is now fixed against the international market, weekly disbursements will not be hard for MIFCO.

He said that the company’s recent difficulties were due to the recent downturn in fishing.

On September 16, 2023, the MDP administration – which went on to lose re-election later that month - raised the fish purchase rate from MVR 17 to MVR 25.

But the new administration lowered the rate to MVR 20.

It said that the MIFCO had purchased fish at a huge loss, and creating a backlog in outstanding payments.

The MVR 20 rate was still a loss for MIFCO, with the government having to pay subsidies to make up for the loss to the company.

Following serial protests by fishermen over the delay in payments, the government decided to fix the purchase rate against the international market.