Sunday 2 March 2014

The "sinking Maldives" revisited: Tourism key to "the Maldives's rise to become South Asia's wealthiest nation"

                                This was probably Mohamed Nasheed's most succesful PR stunt.


Only a couple of years ago, warmist MSM were full of stories about the Maldives, "the string of paradisiacal Indian Ocean islands that could become the first nation lost - entirely - to climate change". The tiny country's then president Mohamed Nasheed - the darling of the global warming church - declared that there only was "a window of opportunity of about seven or eight years.''

Today, with Nasheed gone, that "sinking feeling" is also gone, but you will not find the real story in the mainstream media:
 
The Maldives tourist industry celebrated over one million arrivals last year for the first time in its history, with an increase in 17 percent compared with the previous year’s figures.
Growing from just 2 resorts with a bed capacity of 280 in 1972, the industry now encompasses over 100 resorts with a bed capacity of around 25,000.
Tourism now directly accounts for around thirty percent of the country’s GDP and has contributed to the Maldives’s rise to become South Asia’s wealthiest nation, with GDP per capita doubling over the past ten years alone.
The current government hopes to expand bed capacity in order to achieve the current Tourism Masterplan’s projection of 1.75 million arrivals by 2021.

Neither do the envirofundamentalist media report on these developments:

Best Choice Real Estate Development, a newly established Saudi Arabian real estate investment and development firm based in Riyadh, is developing $100mn Vadinolhu Island located in Laamu Atoll in the Maldives to be ready in 2017 as a premier resort.
Aside from developing the isle as a tourist destination, the international developer plans to offer lucrative investment opportunities to investors.--

Retaj Marketing and Project Management is to sign an agreement to construct hotels, a shopping mall and hotel apartments in the Maldives, according to reports.
The Qatar-based firm has been in negotiations with the Maldives government for nearly 18 months, as part of the company's overseas investment strategy, said Mohammed bin Jawhar, deputy chairman.

Quite a different "window of opportunity" for the Maldives!

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