BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS

During the short period after the presidential election as the elected president of Sri Lanka, Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa has successfully initiated an excellent policymaking and policy implementation process.  The vital aspect of the policy process to the country is the vision and dedicated thrust to work for the achievement of economic advancement, which cannot be gained overnight, but need tremendous work to perform.  To achieve economic advancement, Sri Lanka needs good governance, incentives, and motivation for people to participate in economic activities. Mr.Rajapasa has shown to the world what is yahapalanaya or good governance despite the bogus yahapalanaya has been launched by the Mr.Ranil Wickramasinghe’s government. 

It is observed that Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was talking like John Menard Keynes when he was expressing views about providing 100000 job opportunities to unemployed poor youth in regional Sri Lanka. John Menard Keynes expressed that if there were no jobs in the economy, tell the unemployed workforce to dig holes in the morning and close in the afternoon and pay for people, then they will participate to generate and increasing aggregate demand and eliminate unemployment from the economy. When there is excess capacity in the economy, this type of policy action would be supported to accelerate growth and to achieve more than 7% of the growth rate in Sri Lanka. 

Many developed countries in the West do not give doles for unemployed now and they are trained for various skills to find own work than becoming dole bludgers. The similar way President Rajapaksa has initiated a program instead of dole style samurdi to provide product training and employment.  It is a visionary process to maintain less than 4% of unemployment in the economy and to uplift the purchasing power of poor people and to expand the aggregate demand of the country.  People in Sri Lanka have no understanding of economic jargon, but president Rajapaksa’s strategic vision is great.   

When Sri Lanka gains economic advancement with high GDP, high foreign reserves, higher trade balance, lower unemployment, and excess or very lower budget deficit, there is no doubt that western countries will come behind Sri Lanka for selling their products and services. When President Clinton was in power, he openly said that America wanted to maintain a favorite nation status to China, which was economically vital to the USA.  How China rose in the world economy using completeness, productivity, and many qualitative factors will motivate Sri Lanka for enhancement of productions and many other factors are needed to use by Sri Lanka to gain economic advancement. Recently I watched a program 360 of Derana TV and my feeling is solving economic and education problems are appeared to be simple tasks with acumen ship and stewardship of the leadership.

It is also reported in media that prices of rice and vegetable have gone up.  It is an incentive for producers to increase production.  According to the price theory of economics, the issue must be resolved applying economic theory to practical situation. When there is a lower supply of goods, the price will go up to gain advantages from the situation and producers will be motivated to increase production.  When production increased, it is positively impact to reduce prices and to make lower equilibrium price. The temporary conditions of the country at this moment such as festive season, raining weather, floods will have a short-term impact on increasing prices of essential goods, which will be lower in the medium term and during the Sinhala/ Hindu festival season, people can observe that there will be a lower equilibrium price. These types of situations are simple economics and shouldn’t be taken as points for politics. As Richard J. Lipsey stated the government may need intervention to maintain a reasonable price for producers and consumers.

The repayment of debt is not an issue if the country has a higher GDP growth above 8% per annum, which means Sri Lanka’s economy will be double within 6 years as a result of the multiplier process.  If Sri Lanka can double it’s economy current debt can be settled in the medium term and borrow more to develop new projects. Sri Lanka has many options and strategies to tackle debt problems and in 2018 I explained what should do to tackle the problem.  Increasing the production and selling the excess to overseas is the most effective answer to the problem.

There may be internal saboteurs, who attempt to disturb the economic and other policies of President Rajapaksa. The best example is the Swiss Embassy case, which reflected that Switzerland was publicly talking about democracy and attempted to exercise hegemony over Sri Lanka, where is a developing country endeavoring to achieve economic, political, social and cultural success. Did Switzerland Embassy Officials attempt to give an international disgrace to Sri Lanka showing a fabricated opinion against the country despite the real behaviour to the world that Europe is democratic group of countries.  It is a regret to the democratic world that Switzerland showed an undemocratic behaviour working against the rule of law attempting to work against the legal process of Sri Lanka.  Western democratic countries honestly know that many political asylum cases are manipulated attempts to achieve migration to developed countries than a genuine process of meeting qualification and skills requirements for the purpose. That is why the USA, India, China, Japan, and the UK was maintaining silence on this matter as they did not like to relegate the democracy and the rule of law to a laughing matter for the international community.

Regarding Mr. Champika Ranawaka and Mr. Rajitha Senaratne’s cases, there is local and international legal evidence that both were working against the prevailing law of the country.  Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa needs to motivate the judicial system to act on Central Bank bond scam and other corruption cases.