e-Con e-News

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

e-Con e-News 10-16 August 2025

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‘In virtually every colonial territory

a certain number had to be killed

before the survivors would accept

the new prospects. This might even

be said to introduce a new concept

into the study of political economy

– the indispensable minimum of murder.’

– SBD de Silva, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment

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‘The White House letter to Colombo ended

with the clear threat that future tariff levels

would be decided by the general US-SL

bilateral relations. With no reference to

trade or economic factors, Washington is

indicating expectation of a much wider

geopolitical conformity by Colombo.

– Lakshman Gunasekera (see ee Quotes)

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I remember the World Bank representative saying to me:

‘That’s the norm, that’s how it’s done everywhere.

We write programs for countries.’ I replied,

‘I’m capable of writing my country’s program…’

Multinationals are involved in all development programs.

– Eritrea President Isaias Afwerki (see ee Quotes)

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‘The Moving Finger writes;

&, having writ, Moves on…’

– The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

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How the US embassy in Colombo bribes the media (to move the fingers that write) in Sri Lanka has been a subject of speculation for decades. How Wall Street & the US Treasury run Sri Lanka’s economy (through their World Bank & IMF) is now no secret, though the merchant media here keep trying hard to deflect blame for our woes onto China (see ee Random Notes, Waduge, who names names).

     It is also no secret, what kind of ‘geopolitical conformity’ the USA’s latest ‘bilateral relations’ seek to impose. What is the latest ‘indispensable minimum of murder’ – the brilliant 4 words by SBD summing up his painstaking vast classic on our world’s political economy – that the USA is demanding Sri Lankans must endure, before we accept these ‘new prospects’? What are the ‘new prospects?’ They are yet to be fully divulged. Indeed, there has been no media inquiry into the role the current US Envoy has played in the overthrow of other nations’ leaders before she arrived here to thus also accomplish. Ju Chung however is a mere US State Department coolie, obeying the dicat of her white bosses.

     This week saw the always-leaving-yet-never-departing US envoy’eur Ju Chung have her tired photo taken with: the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce Chairman (& Keells’ casino king) Krishan Balendra, Vice Chairman (& England’s local Standard Chartered Bank CEO) Bingumal Thewarathanthri, Deputy Vice Chair (& Hirdaramani Group Chair) Vinod Hirdaramani, Secretary General & CEO (& on boards of Sierra, Cargills, etc) Buwanekabahu Perera, and others. These ‘executives’ are all beneficiaries of the US’ supposed largesse (60% of the swindle called the ‘garment industry’, ‘which does not make a pin’, destined for the US market). As one reader suggests (see ee Comments), information about the imported tools & machinery & other industrial inputs involved in this ‘garment trade’ is not easily accessible at all (Transparency International, where are you hiding?), and clearly not part of the calculations. Then again, these ‘tariffs’ are not about making trade equitable, but a prelude to another world war, led by the US & their EU satraps, to target China, to preserve white dominance over the world.

     The stashing by these ‘executives’ of their ‘apparel’ revenues in foreign tax hideouts is also well known to the USA. The same goes for the tea business (see below). Our Bribery Commissions are somehow prevented from hauling up these CEOs, let alone interrogating the multinationals they actually represent. Nor will they haul Chung in for questioning, perhaps due to diplomatic protocols, even as the US envoy has clearly overstepped her diplomatic boundaries, confident the US has the dirt on anyone who dares do so. Add this, then, to the 1,000s of photo-ops that have spread her jaded visage throughout the media. Yet with all this radiance, no media has ever dared ask her about her nefarious involvements in the overthrow (& murder, in at least one case) of several American leaders – in Bolivia, Peru, Haiti, etc – before she was installed as US Ambassador to Sri Lanka, on 2022 February 25, just in time to lubricate the aragalaya & almost-murder of a popularly elected President (see ee Random Notes, also see ee Quotes on Nigeria and the US role in promoting the terroristic Boko Haram).

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‘A Financial Times front-page headline, ‘Bombshell on BOI investors’, titles a seemingly hurried news item, blaming government officials who listen to trade unions. The unsigned article claims to represent ‘the investor community’ (see ee Economists). Who exactly is this ‘community’? There was a much-promoted ‘Investors’ Forum’ this week in Singapore, in that refuge of Convicted Central Banker Arjuna Mahendran, organized by the Securities Exchange Commission & Colombo Stock Exchange. The forum included Asia Frontier Capital Fund, Lynear Wealth Management, Bloomberg TV and Farringdon Asset Management. The question as usual is ’investment for what and in what and for whom’?  Investment in modern production, or importing cars, etc.?

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Wages for estate workers are low. This is an industry.

We saw in the recent past that taxed businesses had obtained profits.”

– Bimal Rathnayake, Minister of Transport

(see ee Workers, Increasing plantation workers’ wages a challenge)

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• This somewhat cryptic news item appears to be missing some detail. The Minister, who’s not the Minister of Plantations, also reports the government is working ‘to resolve estate workers’ wage issue within the next few months’. First, he should be aware that the tea fraud is no ‘industry’ at all. It was rumoured that the JVP once planned to uproot the tea bushes and throw them into the sea. But we are sure they have no such imminent plans. This ee Focus concludes Dhanusha Pathirana’s incisive examination, using SBD de Silva’s analyses, of the fraud by the ‘licensed export firms’ that prevents reinvestment of abundant plantation sector surpluses in technological advance. He also notes how fancy accounting practices are employed to suppress and deny the workers’ demand to raise the daily wage up to Rs 1,000 (no, that’s not a typo…). Pathirana also suggests certain steps that need to be taken: eg, on estate superintendents’ control of their National Identity Card applications; also ‘the main political demand of the workers therefore should be to revoke the ‘exclusive’ legal rights of the licensed export firms to purchase from tea auctions’:

‘70% of the profits of the sector are appropriated

by licensed export firms. Both licensed export firms

& RPCs are mainly owned by large conglomerates,

including Aitken Spence PLC, MJF Holdings, Vallibel

Plantation Management, Richard Pieris & Co, James

Finlay Plantation Holdings, Hayleys PLC, among others.’

(see ee Focus)

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We do find it curious, however, that Pathirana has left out the overweening control by Unilever in the tea business, worldwide, let alone omitted the reparations required for those Sinhala people evicted from the highlands. Pathirana notes that this ‘branding’ of ‘Ceylon Tea’, has enabled Lankan tea’s special ‘monopolistic’ niche in the markets, which has no interest in changing a backward colonial status quo of plucking tea by hand on stolen lands. Unilever is now threatening to undermine the ‘Ceylon Tea’ brand by ‘blending’ it with other substances, but not to modernize the sector.

     In 2024, the then-Ministry of Agriculture & Plantation Industries signed an MoU with Unilever to ‘develop the country’s first national and globally accepted standard for sustainable tea production,’ and a more ‘ethical future’ along with the Sri Lanka Tea Board (SLTB), ‘and other tea industry dignitaries’. Unilever Sri Lanka’s ‘Ceytea’ factory in Agarapathana is the largest supplier of black tea extract to the Global Pepsi-Lipton JV, and its Iced Tea brands ‘Lipton’ and ‘Brisk’. This MoU claimed it would ‘drive sustainable sourcing of agricultural raw materials under the Unilever Climate Action Transition Plan’ (see ee Agriculture, Unilever…). What is the link between these ‘export firms’ and Unilever? The role played by multinationals such as Unilever – an offshoot of the 19^th century privatization of England’s East India Company, and the subsequent private English opium trade from India to China – in undermining the state and the economy, is a tale yet to be fully told.

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‘The underdeveloped countries before coming into contact

with Western society were not technologically static…

In the manufacture of consumer articles, especially cotton

& silk textiles, some of the non-European countries

until comparatively recently held a technological lead.’

(SBD de Silva, ee Focus)

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Indeed, for a deeper understanding of how the colonial import-export plantation system has monopolized Sri Lanka’s resources of land & labor, we need to refer to SBD de Silva’s classic The Political Economy of Underdevelopment. This ee Focus begins reproducing his first chapter, after last week concluding his ‘Introduction’, which called for navigating back and forth between our history and the world, to seek clues. Those interested in the state of the economies of Sri Lanka along with the rest of Asia & Africa prior to colonialism – as well as the ‘great divergence’ between Europe, its settler colonies and the rest of the world – will find this Chapter 1 of SBD’s book, most magnetic, with each sentence a product of hours of contemplation. De Silva summarizes whole swathes of history to show how modern imperialism acquired an ‘automaticity’ through political changes favourable to capital accumulation & investment in modern technology. Despite their daily propaganda against state intervention, and the incessant promotion of ‘free trade’, their practices in Sri Lanka have been the exact opposite – just ask British American Tobacco (BAT)’s Ceylon Tobacco Co (CTC) about their monopoly, and the politicians and thinktanks they run. Indeed, the US government’s latest moves very much recall the English system of ‘imperial preference’…

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• With all this current media chatter about the ascension of a ‘reform’ candidate in New York City, ee Focus also continues Gustavus Myers’ 1917 History of Tammany Hall. Myers tracked the emergence of several oppositions to the ‘Big Bosses’ of the status quo, ‘Young Democracy’ etc, that ‘furnish the appearance of a contest’, fronts for the oligarchy that has run the USA’s main metropolis, where gangs control the political process of representation & elections, alternating between thuggery & charity… Particularly interesting is how the corporations place politicians and civic officials, judges and police, on their payroll… We are to be held captive between a rock & a hard place, between the world’s self-proclaimed ‘oldest democracy’ (USA? Really?) & the world’s ‘largest democracy’(India?)… So, we keep being told (but… see ee Quotes, Sunday Times‘ Red Eyebrows).

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Contents:

How Does the US Embassy Bribe Media in Sri Lanka?