The nation of 1,192 coral islands has set December as the move-in date for the first 2,800 residents of Hulhumale, where imported laborers are finishing three-storey apartment blocks a 20-minute ferry commute from the cramped capital Male.

Maldives, an upmarket tourist destination, began scooping soil out of a lagoon in October 1997 in what the government expects to be the grandest of many projects to "reclaim" the sea for an increasingly prosperous nation.

"Reclamation will be a big thing. We don't have land," said Mohammad Shaheed, an administrator of the Hulhumale project in which 65 million dollars has already been invested.

"We are dependent on our resources for tourism. We need to preserve that -- but we can extend our islands geographically," he said.

Developers have received more than 5,000 applications for the first 500 homes that will be ready at the end of the year with prices beginning at 40 dollars a square foot (78 square centimetres), he said.

Maldives' ambitious long-term plan is to bring commerce and light industry to Hulhumale, turning the artificial island that is already geographically larger than the capital into the country's economic center.

The project was launched amid fear that global warming could cause the world's oceans to rise and submerge Maldives, turning the archipelago's 270,000 people into environmental refugees.

Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, the Maldivian president since 1978, has warned that a two-meter (6.6 feet) hike in sea levels would mean "the death of a nation."

Hulhumale is being built two meters above sea level, twice the average for the atoll nation.

Even if global warming does not yield dire consequences, Maldives sorely needs space.

Male is stretched to its limit, with some 70,000 people packed into 192 hectares (474 acres) developed to their last centimeter (inch).

Maldives' population is growing at around 2.9 percent a year, meaning nearly 8,000 more people will need to be housed annually in a country that is more than 99 percent water.

Taking a cue from tourism policy which is studiously planned to maximize revenue and minimize detriment to communities, the new island is being designed to compensate for Male's shortcomings.

While the capital of the resort country has only a small artificial beach, Hulhumale will have Maldives' longest uninterrupted sand area at 2.5 kilometers (one and a half miles). And in contrast to Male's maze of adjoining buildings, Hulhumale will showcase green space and wide boulevards.

But Hulhumale's first 500 families will still be on a construction site, where South Asian and Thai workers lay wires, pour asphalt and sleep in tin shacks on the hot white sand and gravel.

The first residential block will include a school, a hospital and a mosque, which is funded by the government of Qatar. But public entertainment will have to wait, with Hulhumale's planners expecting private entrepreneurs eventually to set up restaurants, cafes or theaters.

The master plan calls for Hulhumale to house 50,000 people over 195 hectares (479 acres) by 2020. Later development envisages 240 more hectares (593 acres) of land and another 100,000 people.

Critics of Gayoom, who on October 17 won five more years in office in a yes-or-no referendum, say Hulhumale will concentrate even more power around Male while neglecting isolated stretches of the 800-kilometer (500-mile) long archipelago.

"They've built more schools, but for any major thing -- medical care, higher education -- you still have to go out of the country," said a former official who fell out with Gayoom.

"You can't even talk against tourism in Maldives. This is like an oil-rich country. Investment means putting up concrete," he said.

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