The government of Maldives has appointed Centerview Partners, a US-based firm, to assist the nation through its current financial crisis, a report by Reuters has confirmed.
The international news agency confirmed the appointment, citing two sources familiar with the situation.
Founded in 2006, Centerview is a comparatively young independent investment banking firm with offices in New York, London, Paris, as well as Menlo Park and San Francisco in California. The firm has worked with Danone, Disney, DuPont, eBay, Kimberly-Clark, Paramount Global, Squarespace, and Trimble.
The Maldives’ public and publicly guaranteed debt stood at US$8.2 billion in the first quarter of the year—118 percent of the nation’s GDP—with debt mostly owed to India and China.
“The administration has decided to take various measures to reduce recurrent expenditure, including reducing the number of political posts and reducing expenditure on, or eliminating altogether, expenses towards commemorating various occasions,” President Muizzu had said in June.
However, the situation continued to deteriorate as the implementation of fiscal reforms were consistently delayed. With the nation’s usable foreign reserves completely exhausted in August, credit rating agencies Fitch and Moody’s subsequently downgraded the nation’s rating to indicate that it might be at imminent risk of defaulting on sovereign debts.
The administration was given a lifeline when the government of India rolled over a US$50 million payment owed in September 2024 to 2025. Since then, the Muizzu administration has also managed to come to an agreement, with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on currency swap lines of US$400 million and INR 30 billion (US$357 million) via the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA). The currency swap lines, as agreed, will be valid until 18 June 2027.