China Eximbank offers $57 million loan for SMART Maldives Project

In 2012, the Sri Lankan subsidiary of Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies signed an MoU with Maldives’ National Centre of Information Technology (NCIT) to develop IT infrastructure in the Maldives under the SMART Maldives Project. Maldives' Ministry of Foreign Affairs then approached China for “concessional financing” of $60 million for the project. In turn, the Export-Import Bank of China offered the Maldives a $57 million USD loan, with a 20-year maturity, to develop IT infrastructure under the SMART Maldives Project. According to Minivan News, the majority of the loan, if it were approved by the People's Majlis, was planned to go towards constructing a new 15-story government office designed partly to house new national IT projects. The projects that were planned to be funded by the loan and undertaken by NCIT included the introduction of “smart cards” – an all-in-one driver’s license, identity and an ATM card – and a high definition video conference network. According to "Reforming ICT Adoption," the SMART Maldives Project was to have encompassed the building of a massive data center capable of hosting all the hardware for government-wide access control, communications, databases and applications services. Additionally, the same document reported that the Chinese government demanded that Huawei be awarded the implementation of the whole project. However, it is unclear if this project ever progressed beyond the initial signing of the MoU. The Maldives Budget in Statistics 2014 document lists no disbursements for this project for 2012 and 2013, but it lists financial estimates of 6,289,157 MVR for 2014, 41,764,571 for 2015 and 133,124,571 for 2016. The Budget in Statistics 2013 document did list an estimate of 25,414,460 MVR for 2013, but there is no revised estimate listed in the 2014 document under the column for 2013 Revised in the Loan Disbursements section. This project is not mentioned in any of the Budget in Statistics documents after 2014. The Statistical Yearbook from the Maldives Government lists no actual disbursements for 2011-2016 for this project. Nor does it list an disbursement estimates from 2017-2019 for this project.

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