Balanced Duet: Maldive Fish..!

Mohammed Jaleel, the Maldives’ Minister for Economic Development and Trade, spoke to The Sunday Times FT on the sidelines of the inaugural meeting of the Sri Lanka – Maldives Bilateral Business Council.

“Presently, we import a large proportion of our requirement of vegetables, meats and fruits from Sri Lanka. However, we also import our requirement of high value-added food products from Australia, Europe and Singapore,” Jaleel said. The challenge, according to him, lies in identifying those areas of the supply chain where the Maldives and Sri Lanka can work together to increase trade.

This would not necessarily tilt the balance of trade - already in favour of Sri Lanka – further “if these are joint ventures“, opines Jaleel. Besides, “We are also looking to increase our exports, mainly of fish and fish products, to Sri Lanka,” says Jaleel. “There’s plenty more that Sri Lankans can take.” Maldive fish already constitutes 72% by value of the Maldives’ export basket to Sri Lanka.

Trade barriers seem to be a bigger concern for Jaleel: “We have issues about putting certain items on a sensitive list. For small countries like ourselves, it’s no good for either.”

“The way forward is to have a reciprocal dialogue to eliminate trade-distorting tariff barriers in a time-bound manner,” says Jaleel, “We can then work together on creating trade-enhancing measures… In any case, we are all bound by SAARC and SAFTA rules on eliminating trade tariffs within a particular period.”

J Kehelpannala, the newly-elected President of the Executive Committee, is Executive Vice President at John Keells Holdings. In his opinion, there has been a lot of investment made by Sri Lanka in the Maldives – which ought to be reciprocated. “We should also look at new initiatives in other areas,” he said.