A special parliamentary committee has started reviewing the request from the Ministry of Finance to extend the suspension of certain clauses of the Fiscal Responsibility Act by one more year.
After the Parliament voted out the request on the sitting on April 21, Parliament Speaker Mohamed Nasheed placed the motion on the agenda again on April 22, citing the importance of the issue on the nation's economy. Parliamentarian Mohamed Rasheed Hussain submitted a motion to forward the request to a nine-member committee for review, which was passed with 51 votes in favour. The committee consists of parliamentarians Mohamed Aslam, Ilyas Labeeb, Yaugoob Abdulla,Hussain Shaheem, Ibrahim Naseem, Mohamed Siyam Hussain, Qasim Ibrahim, Mohamed Saeed, and Mohamed Rasheed Hussain.
The parliament speaker requested the committee to review the request on April 22 to vote on the next day. He expressed hope that political parties will come to a unanimous decision on the matter, and said a sitting will be scheduled for April 25 if the vote fails.
On April 26, 2020, the Parliament approved a motion to suspend, by one year, Article 32, section (a), (d), and (e) of the Fiscal Responsibility Act to allow the government to take long-term loans from Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) in order to manage the cash flow of the state amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In a recent letter to Parliament, Minister of Finance Ibrahim Ameer said the government is still not close to recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and requested a one-year extension of the suspension.