The views expressed in this paper are the views of the authors and do

not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Asian Development

Bank (ADB), or its Board of Governors, or the governments they
represent. ADB does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in
this paper and accepts no responsibility for any consequence of their
use. The countries listed in this paper do not imply any view on ADB's
part as to sovereignty or independent status or necessarily conform to
ADB's terminology.
 Private Sector Development Project
(PSDP)
 Focus: Micro, Small and Medium
Enterprises (MSMEs)

 Implementing Agencies:
Ministry of Economic Development and Trade
Maldives Monetary Authority

 Executing Agency: Ministry of Finance and Treasury

 Intended start date: April 2008

Actual start date : March 2010
 Project Period : Two years
 Total Project Costs : US$ 7.9 million
 Project Impact

A developed and expanded private MSME subsector

towards an accelerated inclusive growth for broad-
based and sustainable local economic development
in the Northern and Southern domestic regions and
targeted sectors in the Maldives.
Project involves the provision of the necessary support
infrastructure to improve the competitiveness of
domestic MSMEs and redress the current regional
imbalance through the promotion of public private
partnerships (PPPs).
 Project Outcomes:
1. MSMEs’ enhanced access to finance

2. MSMEs’ improved access to markets, technology

and information and strengthened capacity

3. Institutionalization of Public-Private Partnership

(PPP) as a means for promoting private sector
 Project Output 1:
Strengthened business support infrastructure through
enhanced access to BDS products and improved procedures
for MSME development through capacity development of
EDU, MNCCI and WEC
Component A
 Sub-Project 1: Strengthening Business Development Service
Centers (BDSCs) for promoting MSMEs.
 Sub-Project 2: Cost Sharing Facility to ensure provision of the
necessary technical assistance and knowledge transfer for
growth-oriented MSME businesses.
 Sub-Project 3: Capacity Development (EDU, MNCCI, and WEC).
 Project Output 2:
Enhanced Access to Finance for MSMEs
 Sub-Project 1: Credit Information Bureau (CIB) Registry to reduce
lending risks for financial institutions.

 Sub-Project 2: A line of credit facility (LCF) scheme amounting to US$3

million. The LCF will involve a special reserve funds to complement
funding from Bank of Maldives (BML) for MSME lending. 90% of the
default risk to be borne by the LCF and the rest by BML.

 Sub-Project 3: Capacity development of financial institutions for

facilitating lending to MSMEs which will help pilot operation of the CSF,
introduction of other financing mechanisms as well as development of
the outreach of existing financial institutions to support remote atolls
development through the provision of incentives in the form of
availability of longer term loans.
 Project Output 3:
Enhanced capacity of public-private partnerships (PPPs)
from legal, regulatory, financing and institutional aspects

 Sub-Project 1: Selection of private sector partners for

development of identified projects on PPP basis.

 Sub-Project 2: PPP enabling framework and capacity

building to develop policy framework and projects in key
sectors on PPP basis; identifying institutional framework,
and private sector capacity issues and policies.
Challenges of Island Economies
 The Maldives has a number of economic disadvantages similar to other
small island economies (SIE) that undermine the country’s international
competitiveness.

 In small economies like the Maldives the percentage deviation of costs

from a medium-size economy are over 70% for sea freight, nearly 50% for
electricity and telephone service, more than 30% for both unskilled labor
and fuel.

 In sectors like tourism, these high costs translate into a 60% overall
increase in the cost of tourism, which can be passed onto the high-end
consumer of tourism activities but are not readily transferable onto
products like handicrafts, agro-industrial products and manufactured
goods that compete in fairly homogeneous international product markets.

 From a policy perspective, it does not suggest the need for protection
against the rest of the world, but rather proactive policies that seek to
overcome, or at least partially compensate for the economic
disadvantages associated with the high production and trading costs.
 Facts about women’s employment
in the Maldives
 Low rate of women’s participation in the labor force
(70% for men and 37% for women in 2005)
 High female youth unemployment (22% for males
and 41% for females in 2005)
 Heavy reliance on migrant labor from overseas
(around 45% of the workforce in the 2006 Maldives
population and housing census were expatriate).
 A household is more likely to be poor if members are
engaged in agriculture, fishing and local
manufacturing, and less likely to be poor if they are
engaged in tourism, trade and transport, or
government.
 Challenges for women’s employment
in the Maldives
 Factors that contribute to women's low labor force
participation include:
 Strong and entrenched gender roles placing women in the
domestic sphere and solely responsible for home and
family, and men dominating the political and economic
spheres;
 Social limitations on women's mobility to other islands to
take up employment, restricting to a large extent both the
number and types of employment available to women; and
 Increasing socio-economic pressures such as overcrowding
in Male, gaps in incomes and services, and impacts of the
tsunami leading to domestic violence and child abuse.

Challenges for women’s entrepreneurship
 The # 1 constraint faced by women in setting up and
expanding a business is lack of finance.
 Most women entrepreneurs are engaged in micro or
small scale businesses that are not able to meet demand
and able to yield only low return.
 High cost and unreliability of (inter-island) transportation
to get products to markets impacts severely on women’s
micro and small enterprises.
 With limited mobility away from their home islands,
women appear to be less ambitious than men and are
also unaware of outside ideas or economic opportunities.
 PSDP’s Provisions to Promote Women’s
Employment and Entrepreneurship
 PSDP’s Line of Credit Facility (LCF) has been targeted to 3 sectors with high
concentration of women’s employment, namely:
 Agriculture (58% are women involved in all aspects of agricultural
production, both commercial horticulture and subsistence production)
 Fishing (mainly value addition and aquaculture)
 Arts and crafts (rope weaving, fabric printing)
 40% of LCF will be targeted for the development of women’s enterprises.
 Services from BDSCs are offered at subsidized rates that are affordable
even by small enterprises, including those owned by women.
 Women’s representation enhanced in decision-making positions in SME
Sector:
- a women representative from the civil society is there to represent
women in the SME Development Council of the Ministry of Trade
- a member from Women Entrepreneurs Association is present in the PSDP
Steering Committee
 Women in the Tourism Sector
 Women make up only 5% of the employees in the
tourism sector, a staggering indicator of missed
opportunity in a sector that contributed 23% of GDP and
24.8% of government revenue in 2005.
 Men provide the partnerships with foreign investors and
have gained employment in the new resorts.
 Societal restrictions on women’s mobility, entrenched
gender roles, societal negative images of women working
in resorts and lack of reliable transportation discourage
women from seeking employment in resorts.
 Women in the Tourism Sector
 Like men, fewer women are engaged in
handicrafts to cater to the tourism sector due
to high costs of production using traditional
techniques, lack of transport and marketing
networks, the non-existence of a regulatory
policy framework to protect the industry from
competition abroad.
 Ways forward
The following are areas for intervention that PSDP may
address:
-establishing a regulatory policy framework to protect
the handicraft industry from competition abroad,
-ensuring access by micro and small women’s
enterprises to BDSC services,
-strengthening women entrepreneurs’ associations to
enhance business development capacity and
marketing networks,
-strengthening SMEs engaged in transport services.