Former Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid has said that people must be allowed to voice their concerns about the rising price of the dollar, and that the right to free expression cannot be locked away.

In a post on X tonight, Shahid said that instead of resolving issues through restrictions, solutions must be shown to the people through transparent policies.

“The right to freedom of expression cannot be shackled. The people must be able to speak about their concerns over the rising dollar rate,” Shahid wrote in his post.

He warned that the government’s policies have failed, and if the course is not corrected, citizens will be left destitute and businesses will be crushed.

Shahid’s remarks come in the wake of the Parliament’s Finance Committee passing amendments to the Foreign Currency Act to ban the reporting of black market dollar exchange rates.

The Finance Committee’s meeting today approved provisions to prohibit the publication of news about dollars being sold on the black market at rates higher than the official rate set by the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA).

The committee also decided to include penalties in the law for those who disclose such information. Under the bill, if a legal entity or registered business publishes black market dollar rates, they can be fined between MVR 100,000 and MVR 5 million.

In addition, the committee decided to criminalise the promotion and advertising of foreign currency trading at rates higher than the rate or band set by the central bank. The penalty for this offence would be a fine between MVR 25,000 and MVR 500,000.

With these changes, a provision has also been included to ban the sale of dollars above the official rate. The committee decided to propose amendments to the law that would impose fines between MVR 25,000 and MVR 1 million on those selling foreign currency above the MMA-set rate.

As the Finance Committee passed provisions to criminalise reporting black market dollar rates, the black market price of the dollar today rose to MVR 22.85.