Sri Lanka’s Demise: What has to be done immediately.
Posted on May 12th, 2022
By Garvin Karunaratne, former Government Agent, Matara
Sri lanka my beloved motherland has descended to chaos. The causes are many, mainly by the country closely following the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Programme since it was imposed at the end of 1977 when President Jayawardena requested financial help and the ineptitude of our leaders. I have since leaving the Administrative Service devoted myself to study and my three books: How the IMF Ruined Sri Lanka & Alternative Programmes of Success(2006), How the IMF Sabotaged Third World Development(2017) and How the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Destroyed Sri Lanka(2022) tell it all.
Though we have approached the IMF, judging from the IMF’s record in the past we can only expect them to restructure the foreign debt. The IMF looks after the interests of the creditors, not the interests of the poor countries which their policies ruined.
We are in dire straits. We have since 1977 dismantled our administrative systems that we had built up for production and got weaned to live on imports.
We do not have any dollars to sustain essential imports for food and daily sustenance. It is my thinking that there will be famine and starvation of untold dimension. I have read of the ideas expressed by our economists Harsha de Silva and Eran Wickremaratna in the news and am thankful for their concern.
It is my plea to everyone to all citizens to get down to plant edibles like sweet potatoe, (batala) manioc, yams and vegetables immediately. Government officials working in every capacity may please also help this process. Though the IMF and our discredited leaders led us down, Mother Nature is bountiful. It is the rainy season and this will help to produce some edibles.
May this message be copied by the media.
Garvin Karunaratne