A system is being developed to prevent resorts from falsely reporting their tourism revenue under the amended Foreign Currency Act, President Dr Mohamed Muizzu said today.

The amendment requires resorts to exchange 40 percent of their monthly revenue in foreign currency through Maldivian banks.

Speaking after a ceremony at the President’s Office to ratify the amendment and several other bills, President Muizzu said the foreign exchange requirement had been introduced after analyzing relevant data and that measures had also been included to prevent businesses from underreporting their income.

President Muizzu said he was confident that every resort in the Maldives would be able to meet the 40 percent requirement after paying loans, employee salaries and operating expenses.

“I looked at all the data in designing this bill. I can say with certainty that there is no resort in Maldives that cannot exchange 40 percent. There won’t be. After paying loans, employee salaries, expenses and day-to-day operations, they will be able to exchange the amount,” he said.

The president said some resorts were claiming they did not earn enough to meet the requirement and could attempt to falsify their revenue figures.

“Then some people are saying that they do not receive that much income. Then they can try to understate their revenue. But the system to prevent that has come from today’s bills,” he said.

President Muizzu said the government would not allow such practices to continue, even if they had occurred in the past.

He said a system would be established to record when tourists enter the Maldives, where they stay and when they leave the country. The information is expected to be available through the system within a month.

“This will prevent falsifying information. That opportunity will be closed,” he said.

“They may have been able to fabricate such information in Maldives before. We will not allow that today. The system in one month will be in place to know where a tourist came from, where they stayed and when they left.”

President Muizzu said the government was taking the measures with a clear understanding of what needed to be done.

He also said the government would seek to ensure fairness in the implementation of the measures, arguing that ordinary Maldivians should not suffer while certain individuals become wealthy from resort earnings.

President Muizzu said he had received various messages after the government decided to increase the amount of resort revenue required to be exchanged through banks, including warnings that the dollar would appreciate on the black market if he continued fulfilling his promises to the people.