Finance Minister during the Ibrahim Mohamed Solih administration, Ibrahim Ameer, has slammed attempts by the Mohamed Muizzu administration to keep the state’s medium-term fiscal and debt statements under wraps.
The Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, at the request of the Ministry of Finance, agreed to hold closed sessions regarding the statements which had previously been a matter of public record since 2018.
The motion to keep proceedings confidential passed after having been put to a vote twice, with five votes in favour.
Ameer, in a post to social media, described the move to conduct sessions privately and out of the public eye as an unacceptable step backwards, going on to state that such matters had been above board during his time as minister.
“Since 2019, we have been publishing the state’s fiscal and debt strategy separately,” he wrote.
Ameer called on the parliament not to go through with such action, highlighting that it was necessary to maintain the confidence of internal and external stakeholders, especially in the current financial situation — even as the Muizzu administration, and other critical observers, blame the Solih administrations, and actions by Ameer, the oft-most criticised Finance Minister since 2008, for the current economic challenges.
At a time when confidence in the administration’s ability to manage financial and economic affairs is at an all-time low, it is important that policies be made public, seeing as keeping them under wraps goes against the spirit of the law, Ameer said.
“When the objective of the two statements was to raise public awareness of the state’s expenditure and revenue policy and to provide a means to assess the administration’s progress towards achieving its policy objectives, keeping the statement confidential violates the spirit of the law,” he said.
Ameer also criticised the administration for suspending the publication of the Weekly Fiscal Development reports.