The Chinese are not the only ones looking to hire Indian cricket coaches. The island nation of Maldives is also harbouring ambitions of joining the select club of cricketing nations around the world and has asked India to not just offer cricket coaching facilities to their youth but also to build a stadium in Male.

The request was communicated to India during Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh’s three-day visit there, which concluded on Thursday. “Maldives’ per capita income is $3,000, the highest in South Asia, and it will soon become a middle-income country. Though they only have a population of three lakh, they get over 6.5 lakh tourists a year. Maldives also exports six times more tuna than us. Their success in tourism and tuna can be replicated in our own Lakshwadeep and Andaman Nicobar islands,” Ramesh said.

While relations between the two nations are better than most of India’s neighbours in South Asia, India’s presence in the overall Maldives economy, which has seen a real GDP growth of 7 per cent for three decades now, is marginal at best. Except for a handful of investments in resorts by Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), the Taj Group of Hotels and the Oberoi Group, virtually no investments have flown from India to Maldives.

After meetings with senior ministers of finance, trade, health, communications and fisheries from the Maldives Government, Ramesh has worked out a six-point action plan for the Indian Government to transform economic ties between the two countries. These include replacing the 1981 trade agreement with a comprehensive economic partnership agreement, and a road map which maybe finalised by a joint working group to be set up within three months.

... contd.