New legislation to open Lanka to ICT experts
Sri Lanka would soon introduce legislation for the Immigration Controller to act as the sole authority to expedite bringing in foreign experts to be employed in the ICT sector in Sri Lanka, said State Minister for Finance, Eran Wickramaratne.
“Sri Lankan ICT companies at times need foreign ICT exporters to work for them to fine tune some of their projects and there is tremendous red tape to get this foreign ICT consultant to Sri Lanka. The Minister was speaking at a forum promoting economic freedom, organized by Colombo-based Advocata Institute and Fraser Institute of Canada.
Firstly the company concerned has to make an application to the relevant Ministry then to the ICTA Agency and then the Department of Immigration. “This takes a long time and now we have come up with a system where the Immigration Controller would be given the powers to approve a working Visa.”
The industry will be asked to give input on a list of skills that they would need which would be revised annually. The Minister said that soon this proposal would be forwarded to the Cabinet for approval.
Minister Wickremeratne said professional bodies of doctors and lawers were against any relaxation of rules and the government did not intend to include them in the easy list.
Meanwhile Michael Walker Cair of Economic Research, Fred McMahon said that economic freedom is key towards a prosperous society. “However I am sad to say that the Economic Freedom indicator for Sri Lanka out of 159 countries has dropped to 94 and this is not a good for a country like Sri Lanka.” “ I think the best way to overcome from this is to increase more exports and woo more foreign direct investments. The best example for this is Singapore where the country from a swamp was converted to a developed country in four decades.”
Cair said that another reason for it success is that the limited number of public servants in Singapore who were paid well and also the highest paid Prime Minister in the world (annual salary around US 2 million) which in turn has resulted in a uncorrupt society.
For this a disciplined society minus corruption is needed but this still seemed a tall order for Sri Lanka. “However I am happy to see that the Sri Lanka Judiciary is moving on the right path.”
He also said that the state sector employees have to be trimmed and Sri Lanka State sector employees numbering over 1.5 million makes it a the third heavily populated public scoter in the world after Jordan and USA.
Asked how the government hopes to trim this figure Minister Wickramaratne said that sincerely he does not have an answer to it.
(Source: Daily News – By Shirajiv Sirimane)
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Keep begging to rest of the world to come here and exploit our cheap labour.
We are unable to have a good economical objective because of the fact that our President is not thinking of we the people to please the west has avoided coal fueled electricity, coal is the way to go as long as a EIA is obtained from Sri Lanka Environmental Authority and the EIRR is more that 10 % make use of least cost electricity which is given by Act No 20 of 2009 which could be given only by coal fueled BOT electricity projects as base load and economical hydro with large reservoirs as peaking power with competitive bidding with a fair pricing formula will prevent a loss of over Rs one Billion per day.
Also is annexed a document down loaded from the Internet with the caption coal industry stock outlook which states among other matters that there is enough coal to last us 116 years, in contrast oil and gas reserves would last only 46 years and 59 years respectively as such make use of least cost electricity which is given by Act No 20 of 2009 which could be given only by coal fueled BOT electricity projects as base load and economical hydro with large reservoirs as peaking power with competitive bidding with a fair pricing formula will prevent a loss of over Rs one Billion per day. It is by converting all transport to electricity driven this saving of one billion Rupees can be obtained to we the people and our Country. It should be noted that the present low oil price in the international market will not last for more than 4 years as such the coal fueled electricity is cheaper and after 4 years the price of oil will rise rapidly. I wish to state in respect of carbon emissions that we have one of the lowest carbon emission in the world. Please find down loaded from the internet which confirms this which gives the carbon emission per person per country which indicates the carbon emissions for Sri Lanka is very small 0.61 metric tons per capita per year which includes the total carbon emissions including transport which is more than twice that of electricity generation while Singapore is 141.1 metric tons, USA 5902.75, Japan 1246..75.
I wish to state that there is no threat of unacceptable standard of pollution from Co2 emissions from a modern coal power station even if we have 15 coal power stations 3x 300 Mw giving 105 billion units per year as indicated in annexed document down loaded from the internet which states 1000 g of Co2/kWh is emitted by a modern coal power station as such to compute the per capita per year carbon emissions assuming a population of 21million our per capita carbon will not exceed 9 metric tons per year as 9 metric tons is the permissible limit. It is computed as follows 105 billion units= 105×109 kWh x 1=105×109 kilograms of carbon, assuming a population of 21 million the per capita carbon emissions is 105×109 /21x 106 =5 x 103 =5 x 1000 Kg= 5 metric tons per capita per year
I wish to state this is the manner how the loss of a billion rupees is estimated is as follows the Colossal losses which are estimated to be about 1127 million rupees per day by not having BOT coal fueled electricity as base load and economical Hydro as peaking power can be saved, by replacing the very high cost electrical units with coal fueled units we will be saving per year about 22×6.5= 143 billion Rupees Rs 22 being the difference between the average price of a unit from oil and a unit from coal and 6.5 billion units per year being the very high priced oil units which we have per year, that is 143×109/365=391 million rupees per day, this is a colossal amount and another 2×391= 782 million rupees per day when we replace all our transport from oil fueled to electricity fueled this is on the assumption that all our transport consumes about 2 times the oil consumed for electricity generation at present and the maintenance costs for electric vehicles including replacement of batteries every 10 years is 30% of the maintenance cost of oil fueled vehicles. The total saving being a colossal 3×391= 1173 million rupees per day. This information should be checked by the CEB Engineers and the PUCSL as it is their statutory duties to do so. I am requesting from government do you agree to obtain the assistance of the CEB and the PUCSL and check the above colossal saving per day. I am requesting from the government do you agree if we had low cost electricity from coal fueled BOT projects and economical Hydro with large Reservoirs as peaking power this lowest cost electricity in the world could be used for controlling floods and diverting them to drought stricken areas low cost electricity from coal have to be used, I have the experienced in Nigeria where in 1980 large 33 Kv pumps rating 1.8 Mw from Germany was used for a lift irrigation in a agricultural scheme. Now the world would have developed much bigger pumps to control the flash floods we had recently and divert them to drought stricken areas where there are large reservoirs without wasting a drop of valuable water