Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Cut down costs!


A lot of people would criticise government’s narrow minded economic policy and I must say most of them are true. World Bank and IMF have reiterated in almost all their publications on Maldivian economy about the lack of flexibility and dependency on natural resources.

We do have master plans of almost all the sectors and National Development plans? Do we really follow them or still we are targeting for short term goals. I would leave this for you to answer!

The recent announcement by the government to cut down costs does not come as a shock for me, because of the fact that most of the spending is by the government. This includes parties, competitions, reducing after hours, opening hours, reduce electricity consumption and transport costs, using phones instead of mobiles and to reduce foreign travel.

Shouldn’t this be in our norms in office? It isn’t and mainly because none of us including myself values the importance of public money. We don’t realise the money we spend ultimately would be taken from our pockets!

We need to cut down our costs, not only in government, we also need to reduce our spending. Reduce buying the latest brands of phones even though we never use the functions except calling and texting, use bicycles or walk to reduce fuel consumption, reduce food waste and electricity and even in clothing!

I believe government’s main objective at the moment should not only be this! Government need to work on projects that would reward and generate revenue. A special emphasis has to be placed on population and development consolidation.

The salaries of high level people should be brought all time low. I could not believe that MPs get $4669 per month. Can you imagine that an Indian MP gets around $1500 and ours get $4669 per month? This is not different for the high level jobs and these people would get an average of around $2000 per month. The worst thing is even after I go back home, I would just earn only $550 per month. Salaries should be cut down where ever possible and should be rationale.

The next question is even though we cut down our costs, would it bring us back to normality! Nah... We are in a worse situation than that! But it sure would help!

1 comment:

dieDie said...

this should be every Maldivian concern cos Maldivians try to show others wat they dun have.when you cant afford something wats the use of trying to impress others.
yeah i guess govt shud think of diversifying and stop depending on tourism. bring more foreign investments and impose the corporate tax.as we highly depend on tourism any changes in the world economy wud have a multiplier effect to our small economy where all the economic indicators are though numerically correct which gives wrong idea to ppl that we are big big ppl in small islands.
onething i can guarantee that riches going richer and poor remains poor.