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‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’

e-Con e-News 01-07 December 2024

What’s the latest Scam, Uncle IMF Sam? Why, why, why is the USA rushing so many US Democratic-Party-allied functionaries, one after another, into Sri Lanka – their pivot within their ‘pivot to Asia’? Can it be the imminent advent of the US Republican-Party’s Trump, who may try grab a percentage of their loot from Sri Lanka?

     Just after China’s envoy Qi Zhenzhong suggests that Sri Lanka’s independence is in peril, the Sunday Times concludes this ‘indicates this country is sailing in rough seas on the external front’. Then in rushes Imran-Coupster Don Banana2 Lu, who must be under pressure, for the photos given to media always show him laughing, laughing and laughing…. Yes, another Donald, a grinning assassin, who seems to have demanded the attention of Sri Lanka’s ‘highest citizens’, numbers 1, 2 & 3 – President, Prime Minister & Speaker – plus the Foreign Minister and Treasury Secretary. Banana Lu is here to reinforce their resident Envoy’s geophysical and fiscal threats. He also provides colored State Department cover for their shady USAID Deputy Assistant Administrator Anjali Kaur & pale US Treasury Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Robert Kaproth, a frequent flyer into Colombo. We should also point out how the Fitch Rating Agency stood erect in glee over the Bank of Ceylon (BOC)’s prospects, right after their envoy lost-Korean Jiyoon (in English doggie-talk, Julie) ‘Banana1’ Chung was taken on a guided tour of the Bank (perhaps its vaults too). And how coincidental is this: A US Court has set a December 16 deadline for US Caribbean tax-hideout Hamilton Reserve Bank’s ISB case against the Sri Lankan Government! So it’s all set for a happy new 2025! Fasten your seatbelts!

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Then again, it maybe Sri Lanka’s abundant minerals, which most citizens seem to be unaware of, which excites Fitch most. Has the BoC agreed not to finance the state’s industrial initiatives, as it was once meant to do? Plans this week by China to restrict exports to the USA of their abundant rare earth minerals (gallium, germanium, graphite, etc), vital for technology, both for military & civilian applications, were announced by their Ministry of Commerce. China’s ban came just a day after the US Biden regime announced restrictions on their exports of ‘cutting-edge chipmaking equipment & materials’ – essential for artificial intelligence (AI) technology. So much for all those Advocata dicta about ‘Free Trade’! So, are these visits about confirming Sri Lanka as a favored US satrapy and a grab for the paydirt?

     Vichara notes in this week’s ee Focus, how Sri Lanka is abundant, under both land & seas too, with such minerals as graphite, which can be:

‘converted into graphene for electronics, medical devices, & energy storage,

and for manufacturing of lithium-ion battery anodes,

a critical component in EVs (e-vehicles).Our ilmenite & rutile

can be refined into titanium metal for aerospace & medical applications

& for the production of ceramic-grade zircon for tiles & sanitaryware.

Our apatite can be used tomanufacture of phosphoric acid & fertilizers.

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It may be no coincidence that the Industries Ministry announced a dossier on industrial lands available for investment, much of it in Mannar. Vichara examines the substance more than the ‘eloquent’ style of the President’s Policy Statement, focusing on the latest government’s plans for the economy. Vichara also points to the US-funded Yahapalana regime’s sabotaging of the Cooperative Wholesale Establishment (CWE), with more-than-a-helping hand by England’s Unilever. The CWE, established to cater to the cooperative sector, was during Philip Gunawardena’s era time linked to the Multi-purpose Cooperative Scheme. He notes how ‘the cooperatives served the nation during the 1983 pogroms when private trade hardly functioned’.

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• Who should be ‘fired’ when the IMF-guided Central Bank gets ‘inflation so wrong’? asks Ahilan Kadirgamar in his exposé of the IMF’s Deflationary Disaster.  In this ee Focus, Kadirgamar points to ‘the overnight depreciation of the rupee from Rs200 to Rs364 to the USDollar’, based on the IMF’s fake prescriptions, which he figures, will undermine ‘economic growth, livelihoods & job creation’. The IMF & most Central Banks around the world remain ‘beholden to the interests of finance capital’. Yet, is it financial capital, or just capital, or more particularly industrial capita? which is what matters most to ee. The job of these IMF-dependent Central Banks is to prevent industrialization in our countries so as to forestall any competition.

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‘Colombo Tea Traders’ Association (CTTA) celebrates 130 years’

• ‘Half the estates are now controlled by 2 big companies – Hayleys & Richard Pieris, notes National Peoples Power (NPP) Executive Committee member &Peradeniya Professor Vijaya Kumar. He is also President of the Lanka Estate Workers’ Union. In this ee Focus Kumar notes, wages in the plantations were once based on Wages Board decisions, until this private management took over in 1992. He makes no mention of the failure to invest in technology & related skills, nor that the top English multinational Unilever, the chief beneficiary of the plantation system, should pay compensation by transferring machine-making tea technology to Sri Lanka. Kumar notes how Regional Plantation Companies are:

Focused on undermining workers’ rights by converting permanent staff

into informal workers offered contract work or independent work through

a pernicious outgrower system, paying them poverty-level wages

& reducing their social protection benefits.

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Management has meanwhile made a fine art of hiding profits by transferring them to

associate companies to justify their claims of running at a loss. But one does not understand

& it remains unexplained why companies are taking on more & more estates

if in fact they are making a loss. Management is able to offer low wages knowing full well

that any strikes by workers living on the kind of subsistence wages paid to estate workers

cannot last long & are bound to fail.

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Plantation workers have traditionally been used as a benchmark to keep wages for all workers low. Our countries are kept underdeveloped by relegating us to exporting such primary products including products based on labor-intensive production processes such as garments, electronic assembly, etc. A small raise in wages translates into lesser profits, and profits over the last 150 years are never invested in capital equipment & raising skills. These workers should be provided equal rights on the basis of being incorporated into the larger body politic, rather than being used as pawns by India & England and the USA. They should also be offered passage to London as an alternative, as was offered to Indians in England’s African colonies – some have become ministers & one even a Prime Minister! – and to ‘Tamil refugees’ this week, who somehow got to enter and stay in a heavily fortified US base in  English-colonized Diego Garcia!

     Again, however, our economists should come right out and prescribe modern industrialization as the answer. They must clearly state: what is to be done. Whining to the master is proof to the master they are doing fine by their slave-driving. Meanwhile, Senior Presidential Advisor Duminda Hulangamuwa recently said the ‘IMF is pushing the country to downsize its public sector employees from 1.3 million to 750,000’, rather than retrain them for more productive work.

     ee therefore reproduces the Communist Party of Sri Lanka (CPSL) statement questioning the Cabinet approval on 12 November to liquidate the State Development & Construction Corporation (SDCC), a state enterprise operating under the Minister of Transport Vijitha Herath, specializing in heavy civil engineering construction projects:

SDCC was established in 1971 to undertake planning, designing &

construction of single & multi-purpose development projects for irrigation,

flood control, power, highways, water supply & drainage, land development

& other similar projects, and the manufacture of concrete & concrete products.

It was also tasked with planning, designing & fabricating mechanical & electrical

installations, extracting, manufacturing, importing & exporting construction raw

materials, machinery & equipment, training of engineering & technical personnel

and carrying out research, in connection with the above undertakings.

The Corporation was envisaged as complementing the State Engineering Corporation,

by undertaking infrastructural civil engineering work, and thereby

enhancing the technological capabilities & industrialization of the country.

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Who is going to do the digging? And how will they dig? And how deep must they go? (before they finally make it to the 21^st century… and finally discovering China?)

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Contents:

US Grabs for Sri Lanka’s Graphite as Cabinet Liquidates State Construction Corporation