Finance Minister promises wide ranging economic reforms
Finance and Mass Media Minister Mangala Samaraweera yesterday promised wide ranging reforms to the economy in the wake of a positive report from the IMF on the country’s economic condition this month.
“We have long term, mid and short terms goals for the economy, explained Minister Samaraweera, addressing a media briefing at the Central Bank yesterday. He added that though the coalition government had inherited a weakened and debt ridden economy from the Rajapaksa regime in 2015, it had managed in the last two years to increase government revenue from 10.1 percent of GDP in 2010 to 14.2 percent of GDP in 2016.
“For the nine years of the Rajapaksa regime, government revenue fell drastically. It was the lowest of all the countries in South Asia. In the meantime, expenditure and debt increased exponentially. All income was needed for debt servicing,” Minister Samaraweera said.
He pointed out that from 2005-2014, government debt had increased by 33 percent.
“We needed reforms but Mahinda Rajapaksa ignored that. I would define those nine years as one where Sri Lanka became a crony capitalistic Kleptrocracy,” Samaraweera said.
The Minister further explained that the country would experience the real crunch in debt servicing in 2018-2019, where the government will have to pay close to Rs 3.2 trillion in debt servicing payments by the end of 2019. “82 percent of those loans coming up for repayment are from the Rajapaksa era”, he said. As the country celebrated 40 years of the Open Market Economic policies this week, the Finance Minister said that the government was creating a better investment environment for investors and that the newly established Public Private Partnership unit of the Finance Ministry would help develop infrastructure in the country.
One of the key public private partnerships of the government, the Hambantota Port Project, he said was due to be signed today (29) and it would be the biggest undertaking a government has done, after the Mahaweli scheme.
(Government News Portal)
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Economic hub of the world. Volkswagen manufacture. 3 state of the art hospitals, mega polles with sky trains,
Paradise of the indian ocean. What more you want folks. No harm dreaming about these before the famine sticks when the money run out from the sale of the infrastructure like land etc and when you cannot borough money from the world bank due to mountain of debts accumulated,
Don’t forget there was a time you were not allowed to have a party more than 20 people and people could not afford to by milk for there babies. Don’t forget the due to free shop only allowed folks who earned real money like pounds and dollars. Rupees did not worth anything.
When JR came to power he borrowed so much money just to show the people that his economic policies are working. From that day they and the following governments borrowed so heavily and this the dept noe they are talking about.
Thanks bloody J R Jayawradana to creating a greedy selfish society.
if samaraweera means real business then he cannot make a unilateral declartion to bring about economic reforms. he could forge a fiscal policy subject to that it goes through the process before it becomes policy.
as for economic reforms it should be a collective effort something likely to be platitudes until some such time there is someone who can provide a real leadership not the ort that either ranil nor sirisena could provide