New Delhi: Even though Maldives has not gone bankrupt as media reports would have us believe, Male is heavily leveraged with external debt mounting to nearly USD 4.038 billion and the internal debt nearly matching the figure with debt crisis looming ahead in 2026. The gross national income of Mohammed Muizzu ruled Maldives is USD 5.6 billion as per official figures.
Maldives President is playing the China card with India hoping that Emperor Xi will give Male aid to tide over economic crisis
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While Muizzu with his overt anti-India stance is asking for debt relief from his close friend Xi Jinping and Islamic emirates in the Middle-East, the Chinese debt of USD 1.3 billion constitutes nearly 30 per cent of its external debt with sovereign bonds maturing in 2026. Even though Muizzu sought financial support from the likes of Turkey and China, no one is seen forthcoming as the Island nation reels in a fully blown economic crisis.
The Chinese surveillance ship Xiang Yang Hong 03, which was scheduled to dock at Male seaport for operational turnaround on February 8, is still awaited by the Maldivian authorities. The spy ship is currently located 20 hours from Male in the south Indian Ocean, well outside the EEZ of the Maldives, Sri Lanka and India.
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Chinese surveillance ship Xiang Yang Hong 03
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For the record, the Chinese surveillance ship was only allowed to use the Male port for OTR and not conduct any survey or ocean bed mapping in the EEZ of Maldives and beyond.
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For the record, the Chinese surveillance ship was only allowed to use the Male port for OTR and not conduct any survey or ocean bed mapping in the EEZ of Maldives and beyond.
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While India is expected to replace the military crew of one ALH helicopter flying Maldivian flag by the end of this month or early March, the Modi government is on a wait and watch mode but fully prepared to help Maldives in case of an humanitarian disaster.
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Rather than get worked up with Muizzu’s anti-India posture for his own political survival, the Modi government has given a green signal to Indian Navy to extend the air strip at Agatti islands in next door Lakshadweep and Minicoy Islands with a new air base sanctioned for Minicoy islands. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will commission the first squadron of MH-60 R Sikorsky helicopters in Kochi on March 4-5 and then head towards Maldives on board India’s two aircraft carrier strike forces to Minicoy to commission a new base called INS Jatayu.
Even though Muizzu’s anti-India political posturing is aimed at the Majlis elections in April, the public mood towards China’s Belt Road Initiative (BRI) for infra development in Maldives is at best lukewarm. This is after a number of countries like Pakistan, Kenya and Tanzania are reeling under BRI debt after taking high interest loans from Chinese EXIM banks.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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Home/World News/Maldives sitting on a debt pile, not bankrupt as of now
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