On December 2, President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu ratified the Bill for the First Amendment to the Fiscal Responsibility Act, a government-initiated amendment rapidly pushed through the People’s Majlis with little explanation and no effort to include the public.

The silent, compressed and strategically timed manner in which this change was rushed through, forces a fundamental question into the spotlight: why was this amendment pushed forward so abruptly, and why was the public deliberately kept uninformed?

International Monetary Fund (IMF) missions conducted from 2020 to 2024 repeatedly stressed the fragility and opacity of the Maldivian financial system. Each mission, without deviation, highlighted the urgent need for substantial reforms to the outdated Public Finance Act (Law No. 7/2013).

Their recommendations echoed a single, resounding theme: the country needed modern fiscal governance, transparent national debt accounting and reforms capable of stabilizing an increasingly precarious financial trajectory.

It was directly because of these sustained warnings that 2024 saw the ratification of two landmark pieces of legislation: the Public Debt Act (Law No. 29/2024), outlining the principles of national debt, and the Fiscal Responsibility Act (Law No. 30/2024), focused on transparency in budgeting and state financial accounts. Both laws officially took effect on 3 June 2025, promising a new era of openness, at least on paper.

The fundamental purpose of fiscal responsibility is not ceremonial. It is structural. It demands the creation of a transparent, accountable financial system anchored in medium-term targets designed to uphold intergenerational equity, the principle that today’s financial policies must not become tomorrow’s burdens.

This system also grants the People’s Majlis the authority to review fiscal implementation, obligating the state to communicate financial operations and outcomes to the public. It outlines the criteria and principles by which the government must be held accountable, criteria intended to guide state finances with discipline, clarity, and integrity.

Article 7 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act establishes the requirement for a Fiscal Responsibility Charter, a guiding document outlining the government’s fiscal targets for the entirety of each five-year presidential term. This Charter must be built on the fiscal policy developed by the Ministry of Finance under the Act’s principles.

The law is clear: the Charter must be published within six months of a presidential term’s commencement.

Further, the Auditor General must publish an annual assessment by the end of October, evaluating the government’s compliance with the Act’s fiscal principles. Based on this assessment, the Ministry of Finance and Planning is required to issue a follow-up report within five months, detailing corrective actions and progress.

In addition to this, the law mandates an unprecedented level of public disclosure. Before any law or decision affecting state finances is enacted, a Fiscal Impact Analysis must be conducted and made public, showing how the decision aligns with fiscal principles and the Charter’s targets.

This framework was designed to force fiscal transparency and prevent governments from operating in the shadows.

Despite the law taking effect on 3 June 2025, and despite Article 39’s requirement that the Charter be published within six months, the government failed to meet the December 3 deadline.

Instead, on 26 November 2025, the administration submitted a sudden amendment to extend the deadline from six months to twenty-four. With extraordinary speed, the Majlis pushed the amendment through on December 1, aided by the administration’s supermajority. President Muizzu ratified it the following day, just twenty-four hours before the original deadline expired.

This wasn’t the only delay. The amendment also extended the timeline for drafting the regulations underpinning the Act by an additional twenty-four months.

The consequences are stark: the Fiscal Responsibility Charter, meant to guide fiscal decisions by early December, has been postponed until 3 June 2027. The regulations needed to implement the Act are similarly delayed until that same date. This places the completion of these key governance instruments roughly one and a half years before the end of the government’s term, with no assurance they won’t be delayed again through another amendment.

A Fiscal Charter typically outlines long-term financial targets, reflecting principles practiced in fiscally responsible countries. Under the Act, this Charter must be tied directly to the government’s fiscal policy. While the Maldives has no tradition of compiling a formal document labeled “Fiscal Policy,” the repealed Public Finance Act required the Ministry of Finance to publish a Medium-Term Fiscal Strategy, a three-year disclosure. Yet even this modest requirement faltered, with the last strategy (2024-2026) only being published in 2024.

Multiple factors are widely believed to lie behind the extension from six months to twenty-four months.

The Medium-Term Fiscal Strategy has not been published since 2024. An IMF Article IV consultation report from March 2025 remains undisclosed, reportedly at the administration’s request. The Maldives Monetary Authority’s financial statistics are also outdated. With national debt ratios and expenditure levels unclear, releasing the Charter would require the government to reveal real fiscal data, data it appears determined to suppress.

The state budget outlines borrowing limits and spending rules. A fiscal policy and Charter would lock these limits into law, making any overreach a legal violation. Delaying the Charter creates freedom, freedom to borrow beyond limits and spend without constraint.

Once the Charter exists, all financial decisions by the Majlis require a public Fiscal Impact Analysis. This analysis would expose the financial consequences of legislative changes, a level of scrutiny the administration appears unwilling to face. Delaying the Charter delays this obligation.

The Muizzu administration has effectively sidestepped a critical legal obligation. By wielding its majority in the Majlis, it has carved out a path to avoid the very mechanisms designed to ensure fiscal accountability and public oversight. This maneuver allows state finances to be handled behind closed doors, shielded from the public.

This is not the conduct of a government committed to safeguarding the nation’s assets or honoring the trust placed in it.

It is the behavior of an administration choosing opacity over responsibility, choosing power over accountability, choosing silence over transparency in matters that define the financial future of the Maldives.