Author Archive for By Garvin Karunaratne
Saturday, March 9th, 2024
By Garvin Karunaratne The Mirror Business Page of 16/2/2024 tells it all: Asserts any disruption to the programme would create high economic costs, including growth setbacks, loss of confidence and prolonged negative investment sentiments. (From Sri Lanka’s Economic revival hinges on IMF Deal”) Our President himself tells us:. We made an economic plan with the IMF. […]
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Saturday, February 24th, 2024
by Garvin Karunaratne Thanks to Cabinet Spokesman, Minister Bandula Gunawardena for revealing that the Sri Lankan Government is running a shortfall of Rs 10 trillion to meet its expenditure with its revenue…We collect only Rs 3 trillion while the expenses are Rs 13 trillion”(The Morning20/02/2024) This reveals a situation of sheer bankruptcy, a situation out […]
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Monday, February 19th, 2024
By Garvin Karunaratne, former GA Matara My warnings about an unbridled Central Bank have come true with the Central Bank mandarins deciding a salary increase of as much as seventy percent, while over half our population lives in sheer poverty having to forgo at least a meal everyday. My Warnings appeared in Lanka Web of […]
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Monday, February 19th, 2024
Garvin Karunaratne, Ph.D. Michigan State University‚ The achievement of the CFTC- the Commonwealth Fund, creating employment for over three million youths in Bangladesh may be of interest. In Bangladesh when the new Military Government of General Ershard took over the country in 1982, the Ministry of Youth Development was providing skills training to 40,000 youths […]
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Saturday, February 10th, 2024
Garvin Karunaratne former SLAS, GA Matara. What the country needs immediately is a programme of employment creation and poverty alleviation where the unemployed will be making things that are being imported today. Last week I saw a packet of pastry sheets made in Malaysia for sale at Cargills. An industry to make pastry sheets can […]
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Thursday, February 8th, 2024
By Garvin Karunaratne I am quoting an earlier paper of mine which if considered can develop the sad state of tourism in our country. The only addition I make is about the takeover of hotel bookings on the Internet by giant foreign companies that have also taken over advertising. Our tourist board authorities have to […]
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Saturday, February 3rd, 2024
By Garvin Karunaratne In the Fifth Century we built Yodha Ela in Anuradhapura District at a gradient of five inches in a mile. Today, we are begging for dollars from the IMF. Our leaders were fooled by the IMF and A country that was never in Debt, got weaned to live on loans and handouts . Our […]
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Friday, February 2nd, 2024
By Garvin Karunaratne All of us do some jobs to find a living and later in retirement get to oblivion, some become activists, others don robes, finding paths for self-salvation. The greatness in Mahindapala is that in unpaid lifetime, in retirement, he fought for Sri Lanka for the downtrodden, and provided ideas for new paths […]
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Wednesday, January 31st, 2024
By Garvin Karunaratne former G.A. Matara It is time to stop political bickering and take action before we totally fail in agriculture and millions face death due to the lack of food. In view of the attempts by our President to boost our agriculture, it may be worthwhile to ascertain what did happen to the […]
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Tuesday, January 30th, 2024
by Garvin Karunaratne. In the Fifth Century we built the Yodha Ela at a gradient of six inches in a mile- so miniscule a gradient that defies the irrigation engineers of today. By 1970, we became self sufficient in producing rice- then we had no poverty as we provided rice free to all on a […]
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Wednesday, January 17th, 2024
by Garvin Karunaratne Our monetary economists of today have decided that printing money is to be stopped till the end of the year. The new Central Bank Act of 2023 is said to forbid money printing. Some foremost economists and the Central Bank of Sri Lanka are of the opinion that printing money causes inflation […]
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Friday, January 12th, 2024
Garvin Karunaratne, former G.A. Matara As a small country with little resources and being harassed by the IMF today, we should know how to manage ourselves within the powerblocks of the World. As Sir John Kotalawala once said we have to be non aligned to any power block. In short, we are today a bankrupt […]
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Tuesday, January 9th, 2024
By Garvin Karunaratne Posted on March 4th, 2021,republished in view of attempts to implement the 13 th Amendment I have in several of my Papers detailed as to Why the 13 th Amendment should be abolished. I have detailed my experiences in my eighteen years’ service in the Administrative Service implementing development programmes islandwide. To […]
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Thursday, December 28th, 2023
Garvin Karunaratne, former GA Matara I fist met Martin when I was appointed the Government Agent at Matara in March 1971. A Senior Clerical Officer in the Katcheri, his work was impeccable, Martin was more a poet. He could turn a stone to gold- detail anything in an amazing manner that evoked a catharsis within […]
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Saturday, December 23rd, 2023
By Garvin Karunaratne It all happened in the Bangladesh Secretariat, three days after General Ershard took over the country in a bloodless coup on the 24 th of March 1982. The Minister for Youth Development was clamped in prison and the work of the Ministry was in jeopardy. The third in command, Air Vice Marshall […]
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Thursday, December 21st, 2023
By Garvin Karunaratne Ph.D. Michigan State University Former SLAS, Government Agent, Matara In the Seventies, the IMF took on the new role of prescribing the path to be taken by the Third World countries to run their economies. This was the Structural Adjustment Program the IMF foisted on every country that sought financial help. President Ronald Regan and Prime Minister […]
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Friday, December 8th, 2023
by Garvin Karunaratne, former GA Matara Economist Eran Wicks has rightly pointed out that we in our poor budget, are wasting funds and spending on unnecessary items. He has rightly said that of the Rs 254 million for the Highways Ministry as much as 85% is to be spent on Highways.(The Morning:1/12/23) I have for […]
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Wednesday, November 15th, 2023
Garvin Karunaratne Former GA Matara 1971-1973 Having read what the newspapers detail on the first day of the budget, I get the impression that Poverty Alleviation and Training and Empovering the unemployed to become productive, making what the economy needs has not been given a place . Opening new universities and selling off post offices […]
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Monday, November 13th, 2023
Garvin Karunaratne War is War where lands are conquered. People are essentially a disposable quantity. That is what we are seeing in Gaza, intense bombing reducing homes to rubble where the occupants are buried. People being displaced. That is Today’s civilized order to clear out Gaza for occupation! We are also seeing the indomitable human […]
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Monday, October 30th, 2023
Garvin Karunaratne Director at Center for Global Poverty Alleviation In my endless travels in countries in three continents, the only country where wind turbines have been continuously sited in the coastal areas happens to be Sri Lanka. In Lanzorette in the Canaries, firstly the authorities built two turbines on the coast, but later they realized […]
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Thursday, October 26th, 2023
By Garvin Karunaratne It is reported that our President Ranil Wickremasinghe is seking th advise from foreign countries like Thailand to resurrect agricultural development in Sri Lanka. We need not go far. Lets go back to the Seventies when we did have a marvellous extension service that enabled us to become self sufficient in paddy, […]
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Wednesday, October 4th, 2023
By Garvin Karunaratne Sri Lanka, a country in grave foreign debt- as much as $ 56 billion in 2023, a country that did not owe a dollar to anyone in the early Seventies, had better organize devices to use the Recently won $3 billion tranche from the IMF for economic development to bring about production […]
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Monday, October 2nd, 2023
Garvin Karunaratne former GA Matara Despite my repeated writings highlighting what has happened to the Dry Zone tanks, the life blood of the people, no action has been taken and today- 2023, there is no proper method of distributing water. This is a matter of great urgency that needs the attention of the Ministry of Agriculture. In […]
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Saturday, September 30th, 2023
by Garvin Karunaratne It is good news that the IMF has agreed to release the second tranche $ 3 billion. I was worried when I read the news of the two specialists that came who voiced that we had not fulfilled all the conditions. However we should be lucky that the IMF decided to release […]
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Friday, September 22nd, 2023
By Garvin Karunaratne Since leaving the Sri Lankan Administrative Service in 1973, I have happened to have worked and lived in four countries for years- that was in the UK, the Bahamas, the USA, and Bangladesh. Regarding patriotism among the people, I have to admit that Sri Lanka would easily be the worst. This […]
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Tuesday, September 12th, 2023
By Garvin Karunaratne The Colonial PeriodAs colonialism was gradually disbanded in the Forties and Fifties many colonial countries were bequeathed with independence, provided with democratic constitutions for governance and allowed to rule themselves. The fundamental aims of the colonial regimes was to maintain law and order, the collection of taxes and to restructure the economies […]
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Tuesday, September 5th, 2023
by Garvin Karunaratne In view of the fact that our foreign debt has increased from $ 56 billion, when President Gotabhaya ceded power to President Ranil Wickremasinghe, to as much as $96.5 billion by 30 the June 2023- a staggering increase of some 70% in fifteen months, it is necessary to step back to see […]
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Sunday, September 3rd, 2023
by Garvin Karunaratne My mind runs in nostaglia to three of my attempts at economic development in three countries, where in two where I failed and finally in the third I did succeed. The first was in Edinburgh where in 1980 I worked as a Senior Community Education Worker in Wester Hailes. One of my […]
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Friday, September 1st, 2023
Garvin Karunaratne former GA Matara, Way back in 1963, as the Assistant Commissioner for Agrarian Services at Anuradhapura I presided over the Kanna Meeting of the KalaWeva-to Anuradhapura Tanks. It was the Yodha Ela that provided water to over a hundred tanks. It was a charged meeting where well over two hundred, were belligerent even […]
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Thursday, August 24th, 2023
Garvin Karunaratne Many recent Papers detailing details of the August 12, 1953 Hartal in nostaglia took me to my days at Arunachalam Hall at Peradeniya. It was the 11 th of August 1953 and we students had planned for a major a protest in Kandy on the next day. The Vice Chancellor had decided that […]
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