Naagoashi resort now 50% complete, expected to open within a year: Minister
Tourism Minister Mohamed Ameen says the MTDC-developed resort at HDh. Naagoashi is half built and should open in roughly 11 months, later than the original plan for this year.
HDh. Naagoashi, an island leased for resort development nearly two decades ago, is expected to open as a resort within about a year, Tourism Minister Mohamed Ameen said tonight.
Naagoashi was first handed to Maldives Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) for resort development in 2006. After 19 years, it has still not been developed.
Last August, the island was again assigned to MTDC with a plan to open this year. At the time, MTDC said the resort would be completed in December, with 183 rooms across four categories, including beach villas, jacuzzi beach villas and water villas. MTDC’s managing director Ahmed Niyaz said then that the resort would create 600 jobs.
Answering a question at a forum tonight, Ameen said 50 percent of the work on the resort is now complete. He said work had been progressing toward an opening in November this year, but that the resort can now be brought into operation in about 11 months. He did not give an exact date.
Earlier attempts to develop Naagoashi with outside companies did not get the project finished. The island was given to a Russian company in 2007, and the government later gave MTDC a 50-year lease in August 2017. In 2018, MTDC decided to sell the island to an investor. About USD 30 million (MVR 462.6 million) was invested in earlier work on the island.
One detail from the source article was left out. It also mentions a Dubai contractor in 2021, but its chronology of the earlier handovers is inconsistent, so you may want to check that part before adding it.
