India a trusted and reliable development partner of Maldives: Jaishankar

India is a “trusted and reliable development partner” of Maldives, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday, even as the Indian Ocean archipelago is grappling to come out of the debt trap of China.

As Jaishankar visited Malé and met his counterpart, Maldivian Foreign Minister Shahid Abdulla, on Friday, he announced a new Line of Credit (LoC) of $ 40 million offered by the Government of India to build sports infrastructure in the Indian Ocean nation.

The External Affairs Minister also handed over to the Maldivian government an additional 100,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines as a gift from India. New Delhi had earlier gifted 100,000 doses of the vaccines to the archipelago, soon after its rollout in India.

New Delhi has been over the past two years trying to resist China’s bid to elbow out India and spread its geopolitical tentacles in Maldives. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government earlier offered two LoCs of a total of $ 1.2 billion – one of $ 800 million in 2019 and another of $ 400 million in 2020 – for development projects in the island nation.

Jaishankar and Shahid on Saturday reviewed the progress of development projects taken up in Maldives with the LoCs from India.

“While our bilateral relations are multifaceted, a key dimension is that India is a trusted and reliable development partner (of Maldives). India’s development assistance is aimed at supporting the aspirations of the youth in Maldives,” Jaishankar said. “It (Government of India) is helping the Government of Maldives in building infrastructure, broadening the economic base, and making the economy more robust and resilient”.

The erstwhile regime of Abdulla Yameen had put Maldives into a debt-trap by awarding the state-owned companies of China contracts to build several infrastructure projects – mostly on unsustainable loan terms. Though Beijing’s influence over Abdullah Yameen regime had resulted in strains in New Delhi’s relations with Malé, it saw a reset after Ibrahim Mohamed Solih and former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed led the Maldivian Democratic Party to victory in the November 2018 elections.

India in August 2020 announced a financial package – consisting of a grant of $ 100 million and a LoC of $ 400 million – to support construction of a 6.7-km-long bridge-cum-causeway link between Malé and its three other islands. The Greater Malé Connectivity Project will streamline connectivity between the four islands, boost economic activity and generate employment in Maldives. “We expect it to become an economic lifeline of the new Maldives; connecting Malé with Villingili, the new commercial port at Gulhifalhu and industrial zone at Thilafushi,” Jaishankar said on Saturday.