Rapid livelihood assessment : impact of the COVID-19 crisis in the Maldives

Abstract

This report is commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Development, the Government of Maldives. The assessment was completed with support from UNDP Maldives. To address the sensitivity of time and urgent need to understand the context, a preliminary report was released in early June 2020 with initial findings and recommendations. This final report is a compendium of three separate reports. They include: Part I: Economic Overview; Part II: Employment Impact; and, Part III: Impact on MSMEs. The rapid assessment aimed to understand the extent and nature of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the Maldivian economy. More specifically, the assessment covers the impact on employment and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). The overall purpose of the assessment was to support timely economic response and recovery planning for the Maldives. This report summarizes the key information and key findings from Part II and III. This report, Part I of the Rapid Livelihood Assessment, provides an overview of key economic sectors. The data presented below offers a pre-COVID-19 baseline context of the economy, with updates of available administrative data, that attempts to capture the onset and impact of the crisis on key economic sectors from February 2020 onwards. A deeper look at the impact of the crisis on tourist establishments and their operations is covered in subsequent sections of this report. The analysis highlights relevant policy responses that have been put in place in response to the crisis. To guide the direction and scope of the assessment, and to provide technical support and quality assurance to the data collection, a technical team composed of key partners was formed (see list of technical members above). The technical team met regularly and has to date provided support to develop the assessment methodology, data collection tools and provided quality assurance on reporting and analysis. The assessment methodology applied a mixed-method approach and utilized quantitative and qualitative data. The assessment attempted to cover overall impacts of the crisis on employment and businesses across all economic sectors through secondary data that was available. Primary data collection and in-depth analysis of the assessment focused primarily on the tourism sector. Tourism sector impacts were explored in detail as it is the largest industry and the largest source of private sector employment in the economy and it is the industry which was exposed to the COVID-19 crisis from its onset in February 2020. For the Part II of the assessment, to understand employment impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, key secondary data sources that were reviewed and analysed include the latest tourism employment data shared by the National Bureau of Statistics and dataset extracted from the Government’s online job portal, JobCenter.mv covering 7,500 individuals across all economic sectors. The Government’s online job portal hosted by the Ministry of Economic Development is the primary avenue for lodging complaints concerning COVID-19 related employment impacts and for seeking income support from the Government’s relief programme. Primary data collection undertaken for the Part II of this assessment include (i) phone survey with management level respondents covering a total of 34 resorts out of 40 sampled, which were completed during April to June period. The 34 resorts interviewed employs 30 percent of the total employee population of the resort establishments in the Maldives and (ii) in-depth key informant interviews with 30 resort employees registered in JobCenter.mv covering 13 resorts were completed during the last week of April 2020. The detailed sampling strategy for the selection of respondents for the resort management survey and the in-depth interviews with employees are provided in the Appendix of the Part II of this publication. For the Part III of the assessment exploring the impact of the crisis on MSMEs, a key secondary data source that was used was the MSME baseline survey data collected by the Business Center Corporation (BCC) from March to April 2020. The baseline survey was undertaken across all economic sectors and across all regions of the Maldives. Other secondary data reviewed include the various surveys and reports published by business associations.5 Primary data collection undertaken for the assessment include 67 in-depth key informant interviews and focus group discussions covering MSMEs in the tourism value chain was completed during the period mid-June to early July 2020. The detailed sampling strategy for identifying respondents for the in-depth interviews with businesses are found in the Appendix of the Part III of this publication. Other aspects of the methodology including limitations are detailed in Part II and III of the publication. The final reporting of this assessment was undertaken during July to early August 2020. The draft report was reviewed by the technical advisory team members, members of the UN Maldives Socio-Economic Working Group on COVID-19 and technical experts at the UNDP Global Policy Network (GPN) and thematic experts at the UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub (BRH). Editing and additional quality assurance support was provided by the UNDP BRH and UNDP Maldives.