Self-exiled former president Mohamed Nasheed on Friday slammed the government controlled parliament for "rushing" the free agreement with China in blatant violation of its rules of procedure.
Speaker Abdulla Maseeh had called in an emergency parliament session on Wednesday to accept the agreement before immediately sending it for the national security committee for review. The committee also with government majority had signed off on the agreement in less than 10 minutes sparking opposition outrage and concern saying that lawmakers "had not even seen the actual agreement."
Thirty lawmakers present during the late Wednesday sitting voted in favour of signing the agreement, with most government MPs echoing the benefits of the pact to the archipelago with of course no opposition lawmaker present.
The former president in a statement on YouTube said the parliament had signed off on the agreement in violation of its rules of procedure making the approval "illegal".
Despite the government insisting that the agreement favours the Maldives, Nasheed said the archipelago would lose out as the country would be unable to impose excise duty on Chinese products coming into the Maldives which would severely undermine products brought in from other countries.
"When that happens Chinese products would be comparatively cheaper and in turn would benefit China," he stressed.
Maldives and China entered into free trade talks in 2014 and had held multiple rounds of discussions. Maldives is seeking tax exemption from all food and seafood products exported from the archipelago to China, which according to the government includes over 400 local products currently in the market.
Government had assured that the agreement would favour the Maldives and would provide a huge boost to the Maldives highlighting the fisheries sector as the primary beneficiary.
"The door has been opened to export our fish products to the largest consumer market in the world on zero percent [duty]," economic minister Mohamed Saeed told reporters after the cabinet gave the go ahead to sign the agreement earlier Wednesday.
"The door has been opened to export our fish products to the largest consumer market in the world on zero percent [duty]," Saeed enthused.
The minister insisted that the agreement has been designed to favour the Maldives more than China.
"... this could very well be the first time in history that such a large market has agree to deal with a small country and that too to largely favour and benefit us," he added.
Nasheed however, said the agreement would undermine the value of local fish products as local fish exporters would be at the mercy of China as they would be unable to significantly better markets.
"We don't have statistics to show how much we exported to China in 2016. But we had imports from China worth MVR4.3 billion during that time. That means our imports from China exceeds our exports by a huge margin," he explained.
Nasheed said the government pinning hopes on the agreement to boost Chinese investors were also misguided as the global superpower has such free trade agreements with multiple countries more attractive than the Maldives.
