Finance Minister Ibrahim Ameer said it is not acceptable to waste the resources allocated for Aasandha insurance scheme.
While answering the questions by the Parliamentary Committee researching the proposed state budget for 2022, Minister Ameer said the government decided to reduce the budget allocated for Aasandha to reduce wasting resources. He further stated the budget was not reduced to decrease the services Aasandha provides.
"It is a great injustice to allow money collected from citizens as tax and through non-taxable means to go to Aasandha, which is often leaked out due to the way the mechanism is set up. It is irresponsible to do so," he said.
Referring to a survey conducted by World Bank, Ameer said Maldives sells medicine at the highest price in this region. According to the survey, Maldives' medicine prices are 75.9 percent over that of this regions.
Over MVR 730 million will be saved next year from the state budget as Maldives is working on controlling medicine prices at the moment. Over MVR 1 billion is spent every year on Aasandha previously.
The price of medicine will be controlled in two phases; the first phase will have the prices controlled for 357 medicines while the medicines for non-essential medicine will be set in the second phase of this operation, likely to go into affect by the middle of next year.
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