BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS

Macroeconomic issues strongly associate with living condition of ordinary people in Sri Lanka. Population, unemployment, economic growth, budget deficit, terms of trade, trade balance, investment such as many others could be given as examples and the pathetic situation in the country is macroeconomic issues and the influence of them to ordinary people has clearly not identified for policy making purpose, and the way these issues influence on the living condition of ordinary people have not studied and developed policies consistent with the issues giving benefits to ordinary people. The macroeconomy is directly associated with day to day living and people are sticked to them. Especially prices of goods and services that associate with the living condition of people have been less considered by policy makers and it has become a major managerial issue of the economy.

Poor people in Sri Lanka subject to many suffering because of macroeconomic management and rich community can tackle own problems without difficulties. The nature of macroeconomic problems is they are linked to each other and policy makers need to identify the links and the mathematical relation of the links for policy making purpose. Such mathematical relation could be quantified the policy priorities. In Sri Lanka policy priorities based on research are weak and despite the government spending for research policy supports do not generate from the research activities.   

According to IMF forecast for 2023, economic growth would be limited and within these limits the productivity improvement will be the most critical and vital areas for the country. In other words, within available resources government policy must attempt to gain maximum benefits to the community. Other regrettable development shows that promoting wars and spending more funds for wars have become actual priority in Europe and America and many people silently thinking that the world might become like an era of Vietnam war.  

In Sri Lanka illicit drug business influences the general business of the country forcing to increase the expenditure level that could be reduced by 7% if the illegal business controls effectively and the saving from such controls should freely allow to invest in normal business and production process.

Economic advisors in Sri Lanka either don’t know what to do or otherwise self-centred people attempting to gain unfair advantages from the policy making process and the president needs to direct intervention to policy makers for considering macroeconomic problems. The specific nature compared to people in other countries Sri Lanka without difference in ethnic, religious and cultural diversity they love to talk politics and ignore the role of them.

The following major macroeconomic problems and requirements must be considered by the president.

• Higher population has created many economic problems to the country and economic indicators are comparatively lower because higher population. Economic outcomes are divided by population for per capital situation and although Sri Lanka has good outcomes, they show comparatively small volume as the higher population in the country. When considering this issue, the aging of population its impact to workforce needs to consider.  Therefore, Sri Lanka needs an aggregate plan for population control rejecting narrow thinking of people. When calculate per capita statistics, Sri Lanka gets lower values because higher population. The contributing factor for higher population is weak preventive check in population control. Preventive Check should apply among all communities and within next ten years it needs to develop to maintain 15 million to total population in the country.
• Investment barriers and shortage of capital.  Less savings in the country has caused to create investment problems. The gap between saving and investment has been a problem since 1950s but no effective solution has so considered, in addition, there are regulatory issues and competition among other countries to attract investment has negatively influenced for attracting investments.
• Import and export related problems.  Sri Lanka should allow import of essential items for continuing domestic production. Modernization and improvement of export quality are vital points that should be considered.
• Competency (Outcome) based education must be the education policy and from secondary education competency-based training should be applied and literacy-based education for primary level and early childhood education.
• Providing education in three media such as Sinhala, Tamil and English and Hindi and Chinese should be the second languages. Three media means one student should complete education in three languages which empower students to gain knowledge, skills and values broadly using different languages.
• Creating jobs in rural area transferring population from urban area to rural area require to country. The current nature is transferring from rural to urban and this nature should completely reverse changing the current system.
• Creating mega cities in regional areas was a vital policy development but it was died at the birthplace because they were for just talking rather than implementing purpose.
• Banning political parties based on vicious motives