The Malaysian government had sent its foreign minister to Maldives to save the Male airport contract held by the GMR-led consortium, in which Malaysia Airports Berhad was a partner.
“We sent our foreign minister to plead with the authorities in Maldives but to no avail,” Mustapa Mohamed, Malaysia’s minister for international trade and industry, said here today, while stating what had happened there was very unfortunate.
Malaysia Airports Berhad has a partnership with the GMR group in both Delhi and Hyderabad airport projects, besides the one in operation in Turkey.
The Male airport project would have been yet another success story of this partnership, if the project had not been terminated earlier this month by the new government in Maldives, according to him.
Commenting on the future course of action, the minister said there would be an arbitration to deliberate the issue of compensation. “We hope to get adequate compensation if we will not be able to get the project back,” he said.
Mustapa Muhamed is on a two-day visit to Hyderabad as part of a trade mission ahead of a meeting between the heads of the governments of India and Malaysia scheduled to take place next week in Delhi.
Responding to a question, the minister said his government would like to see adequate protection to Malaysian companies overseas as these were legitimate agreements. “We do sign investment guarantee agreements besides agreement of protection, including compensation in the event of expropriation, nationalisation or whatever course of action taken by countries,” he said.