The Maldives Airports Company Pvt Ltd (MACL) has announced a series of cost-cutting measures across ten key areas. This decision aligns with President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu’s decision to reduce the expenditure of the entire state, according to MACL’s Managing Director, Ibrahim Shareef Mohamed.
Speaking to reporters, Shareef said the cost-cutting measures that are adopted must be achievable. He assured that no MACL employees would be terminated and salaries would not be reduced as part of these measures, and asserted that the company’s employees were extremely valuable to the company’s workforce.
The ten areas where MACL will cut costs are:
- Expenditure on oil
- Cost of consumables
- Cost of water and electricity
- Transportation expenses
- Expenditure on internal activities
- Bank charges
- Communication costs
- Internal inventory expenses
- Event costs
- Operating expenses
Shareef noted that MACL is the largest electricity consumer in the Male’ area. While the generator sets currently used by MACL to generate electricity are not of the best quality, this increases the expenditure on diesel, he said. To address this, MACL will undertake a power upgrading project within the next 15 days, which will reduce fuel costs by 20 percent.
Shareef said the as significant costs are incurred for printing, the company aims to go paperless within the next year, which would eliminate the need for new printers. To reduce the cost of consumables, the company will maintain its stock more responsibly and reduce the cost by 10 percent, he added. While MACL is also a company that produces water to some extent, and the cost of cooling is also high, water production will be reduced and water wastage will be reduced as much as possible.
Shareef said MACL has reviewed its relevant policy to reduce travel costs and has decided use not to travel in business class, and avoid unnecessary trips. Mandatory trainings will be conducted online where possible, and experts will be brought to the Maldives for in-person training.
MACL will start restructuring the company to increase efficiency and reduce costs in the coming days, he said. Shareef said large companies like MACL spend heavily on investment. Therefore, MACL will initiate discussions with banks to lower bank charges on these investments. Furthermore, the company will utilize VoIP technology already invested for improvements.
On communication costs, Shareef said the use of soft PBX instead of a hardware-dependent telephone network could reduce communication costs by 60 percent. For every MVR 100 spent on telephone, MVR 60 will be saved, Shareef said.
Shareef said MACL is an airport operator and therefore has to spend significant amounts on vehicles and equipment. Therefore, after checking the amount in inventory, only what is essential will be purchased in the future, he said.
On event management, Shareef said the cost of events could be significantly reduced by insourcing the event instead of giving it to other companies.
"As you know, we recently opened a fire station. Because we did the work was managed in-house, we did not spend even MVR 100,000 for the entire event. If we outsource such an event, we would spend at least half a million,” he said.
For future events, the highest amount that can be spent will be capped at MVR 100,000, said Shareef.
The cost cutting measures by MACL will reduce costs by 20 percent.
