Compared to the first quarter of 2019, the GDP of the Maldives in the first quarter of 2020 has gone down by 5.9 percent according to the quarterly national accounts published by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The statistics released by NBS yesterday said that the real quarterly GDP was at a market prize of MVR 19,778 million last year compared to the MVR 18,602 million of this year.

A reason for this drop is stated to be the dwindling of the tourism and construction sector along with the whole sale and retail. And so in the first three months this year, the tourism sector had dropped by 2.7 percent and construction industry by 1.4 percent while whole sale and retail had dropped by 1.0 percent.

Since a large portion of the Maldivian economy is controlled by the tourism sector, the tourism sector gets a boost at the beginning and at the end of each year. However, the GVA was at 4.93 billion, a 10.3 percent drop compared 10.3 percent of the same quarter last year. It is also a 6.5 percent drop from last quarter of 2019.

The GDP summary of the first quarter of 2020 show that 26.5 percent of the GDP was by the tourism sector with transport and communication sector being the second highest with 13.4 percent. The third highest is the Public Administration sector with 8.7 percent.

NBS said that with resort and housing construction projects underway in the past year, the GDP share of the construction and real-estate are increasing. And real-estate was the fourth highest share in the GDP of the first quarter with 6.6 percent followed by construction sector with 4.9 percent.

Comparing the national GDP from quarter to quarter, the first quarter of 2020 shows a drop of 6.4 percent with a growth rate of –5.9 percent compared to the same quarter of 2019.