Sugath Kulatunga

A National Council has been established within the Parliament consisting of 35 members representing all political parties with the objective of

a)     Determine priorities on guidelines for the formulation of National short-, medium- and long-term policies.

b)    To reach a consensus on a common minimum short-, medium- and long-term program to stabilize the economy.

There is serious doubt whether the members of this Council have the capacity and the will to deliver the tasks assigned. Most of them have been in Parliament for decades and some have held ministerial responsibilities. When even the very Parliament which had overarching power over finance had no sense of priorities and allowed the present crisis to develop over so many years failed miserably, serious doubts on these 35 members making an impact is justified. National policies and priorities should be devoid of partisan politics. It would be impossible for these members to determine national interest over political interest.

In 1956 Sri Lanka introduced the National Planning Council Act where the Council was to advise the Cabinet on the planning of agriculture, industry, commerce, education, housing, health and social services, public utilities, and all other matters pertaining to the national economy. SWRD envisaged a 10-year national development plan. It was after 1977 that National planning was given up.

Priorities on National Development cannot be plucked out of thin air but must be based on potential and prospects of the economy based on in depth studies. This is the task of a National Planning body staffed with trained technocrats. Political manifestos provide visions on national development. We had such broad visions in Regaining Sri Lanka, Mahinda Chintanaya, and Visions of Prosperity but did not have any well formulated plans for implementations.

The number of countries with a national development plan has more than doubled, from about 62 in 2006 to 134 in 2018. More than 80 per cent of the global population now lives in a country with a national development plan of one form or another. This is a stunning recovery of a practice that had been discredited in the 1980s and 1990s as a relic of directed economies and state-led development.

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China is on their 14^th 5-year Plan and South Korea is on the fifth 5 year plan.

What we need is a scientifically formulated National Development Plan and a strong mechanism for plan implementation and not a political declaration of the state of the Union”.

Sugath Kulatunga