President Mohamed Muizzu has once again announced that the airport development project in Gaaf Dhaal Thinadhoo will proceed, following the cancellation of a previous agreement awarded to a fraudulent "shell company."
The initial agreement to build an airport in Thinadhoo was signed in February 2024. However, Muizzu announced the cancellation of that project in May 2025.
Speaking on the President’s Office’s "Pulse" program yesterday, he emphasized that the Thinadhoo airport remains one of his biggest projects. He reaffirmed his commitment to seeing the project through.
"The Thinadhoo airport project is my most important promise. God willing, that project will also commence very soon," Muizzu stated.
On the day the previous project’s cancellation was announced, the President had suggested an alternative plan: upgrading Kaadedhdhoo Airport and connecting it to Thinadhoo.
"The plan was to develop Kaadedhdhoo Airport as an international hub and undertake a project to build a bridge connecting Kaadedhdhoo and Thinadhoo. We had reached the stage of signing the agreement for that," he said.
The original contract for the Thinadhoo airport was awarded in February 2024, during the parliamentary election campaign, to a Thai company named Pan Pacific. Investigations into the company’s background revealed it to be a "paper company" involved in business scams.
Jirat Petnunthawong, an investor representing Pan Pacific, visited Kaadedhdhoo in April last year to inspect airport operations. No further details regarding the outcome of that visit were ever released.
During yesterday’s remarks, Muizzu did not provide details on the status of the project signed during the campaign period. Furthermore, his previous comments regarding the bridge connection were only made after being questioned about the airport. Before that, no government source had officially confirmed that the airport project had been scrapped.
Investigations into Pan Pacific revealed that the USD 600 million Thinadhoo airport project was awarded to a firm lacking the financial capacity or track record to manage such a massive undertaking. Records indicated the company was registered as a garment trader, though even those operations appeared to exist only on paper.
Kaadedhdhoo, one of the Maldives' oldest domestic airports, is located just three kilometers from Thinadhoo. The airport is currently operated by Villa Group, owned by businessman and Maamigili MP Qasim Ibrahim.
During a Parliamentary Committee meeting regarding the facilities at Kaadedhdhoo, Villa Group stated that the government's decision to build a separate airport in Thinadhoo had created challenges for the company in securing financing to upgrade the Kaadedhdhoo infrastructure.
