by Garvin Karunaratne, GA Matara half a century ago Our country, Sri Lanka has had a long history of development programs to provide for low income and incomeless people. The best method of finding incomes for the low waged is by getting them on the ladder to attend to some task which helps them creating […]

by Garvin Karunaratne Posted on January 17th, 2024 Our monetary economists of today have decided that printing money is to be stopped till the end of the year. The new Central Bank Act of 2023 is said to forbid money printing. Some foremost economists and the Central Bank of Sri Lanka are of the opinion […]

by Garvin Karunaratne . Ph.D (Michigan State University) The recovery for the Ditwah Disaster will require billions. It is a bigger task than fixing all our irrigation tanks and financing the resettlement of people in the Dry Zone, a task well done in recent times. How is this task to be financed. Already foreign money […]

By Garvin Karunaratne Living in SriLanka for a few weeks I am stunned that we have no real development programmes that can convert the idle hours of our poor – the unemployed, into an income and in that process also produce some item that we import. This process will also really  create foreign exchange for […]

by Garvin Karunaratne. Courtesy The Island/03.05.2023 The Sri Lankan government is finding it hard to fulfil the regulations agreed upon with the IMF in the Houses of Parliament on April 28, 2023. However, there was no other option but to agree. According to Professor Vasanta Atukorale, the increases in taxes amount to a staggering 441%. […]

By Garvin Karunaratne, former G.A.Matara As a school boy at St Peter’s College I was always dragged by my father to mount and set up a public address system at one of the LSSP meetings. He owned Radio Works Bambalapitiya and held a contract with the LSSP to supply public address systems at election meetings […]

by Garvin Karunaratne The various countries in the World, both in the Developed and Under-developed areas are in utter chaos, with citizens moving en masse from the under developed countries to the developed world -North America and the European countries. One route is via North Africa and Italy to the European countries and Italy is […]

by Garvin Karunaratne, Ph.D. Michigan State University The most vulnerable today in our Motherland are the persons and families that live on casual incomes far lower than Rs. 100,000 a month, some who depend on any income that comes their way., with no regular income whatsoever. In the City of Colombo I am personally aware […]

by Garvin Karunaratne Let us harness the wind for power and stop spending dollars for oil By Garvin Karunaratne I enclose a write up by eesrilanka wordpress.com/2019/04/13/playing with history: on some of my writings. __________________________________________________________ C2. Buying Power from Multinationals Garvin Karunaratne recalls his experience of 18 years working in stations like Hambantota as well as in […]

by Garvin Karunaratne I enclose an earlier Paper of mine. Hope the Government of Premier Anura Kumara will read it. Though in my Nineties, if called upon  I will undertake to see that all the power we need comes from the Wind Power in our hills, all done within twelve months.  It will be a […]

by Garvin Karunaratne We have little say about restrictions being imposed on us. Somehow we have to stand on our feet. In the far past we did have programmes that tackled poverty and enabled people to produce what we need. However today no attempt is being made to help people to become entrepreneurs, to make […]

By Garvin Karunaratne President Trump is looking after the interests of the USA and mind you within months many industries will open up making what the USA did import. Once I owned a Roadtrek-Chevrolet campervan in the USA and clocked over 50,000 miles travel over hill and dale. It was a marvel, far better that […]

By Garvin Karunaratne, former GA Matara  It is reported that a number of leading countries including the USA and India want to wrest control of our graphite. I have read somewhere that our graphite is of superb quality- something like the best in the World.. Because we are buried in the quagmire of debt and […]

by Garvin Karunaratne E-Con-E-News 3-9 th November in Lanka Web writes: • ‘Garvin Karunaratne writes again today. I have read his Dahanayaka & red-onion affair several times in the Island. His telephone handling at the Marketing Department’s Tripoli HQ resembles Mountbatten’s war operations room.’” We did use phones in a remarkable way to move veg […]

Garvin Karunaratne former Government Agent, Matara (Posted on November 17th, 2013; reprinted for kind consideration  a decade later) A Spectacular Phenomenon Last week I went to Iceland, in search of the Northern Lights, a mysterious phenomenon – coloured shades of light in the sky taking various forms, at times even sequencing a dance.‚  Every tourist […]

by Garvin Karunaratne When we became independent in 1948, we- the colonies were the market for everything produced in the UK. With independence, we had to change to enable development, production in industry and agriculture and foremost to alleviate poverty. We had commenced Land Development, Irrigation, and Agriculture. To enable people to be trained, we […]

by Garvin Karunaratne Sri Lanka, a sovereign country that did not owe a penny to anyone in 1977 has built up a foreign debt by following the dictates of the International Monetary Fund since 1977. In September 2022 the foreign debt was at $ 47.7 billion and by September 2024 the foreign debt was stated […]

by Dr Garvin Karunaratne I enclose my earlier Paper,  posted in Lanka Web  two years ago(11/3/2022), re edited in the hope that its recommendations to build up our economy will be heard in the portals of our new saviour President Anura Kumara Dissanayake. This Paper contains a blue print for immediate action to build up […]

By Garvin Karunaratne It all happened in the Bangladesh Secretariat, three days after General Ershard took over the country in a bloodless coup on the 24 th of March 1982. The Minister for Youth Development was clamped in prison and the work of the Ministry was in jeopardy. The third in command, Air Vice Marshall […]

by Garvin Karunaratne In Bangladesh when the new Military Government of General Ershard took over the country in 1982, the Ministry of Youth Development was providing skills training to 40,000 youths annually but the vast majority of them failed to find employment and continued to be unemployed, scrapping the barrel, 33 for life. I happened to […]

by Garvin Karunaratne On many an occasion on my never ending irrigation inspections in Kandy and Nuwara Eliya long ago I had to cling onto trees and, creepers to avoid being blown off by the power of the wind. I enclose what I once wrote hoping that our new Government of Anura Kumara Dissanayake will […]

by Garvin Karunaratne I recall my days in Anuradhapura in the early 1960s, tackling minor irrigation as an Assistant Commissioner of Agrarian Services in charge of the subject. The subject of irrigation works, both the major tanks- over 200 acres done by the Irrigation Department and the minor tanks under nobody at the moment, required immediate attention. All […]

by Garvin Karunaratne The Background Sri Lanka is facing a severe recession . During the reign when Ranil Wickremasinghe ruled as the President from mid 2022 to November 2024, with the majority in Parliament supporting him the foreign debt ballooned from $ 56 billion in 2022 to as much as $ 100 billion when the […]

by Garvin Karunaratne I write in support of MP Mr Tilvin Silva’s, idea that Provincial Councils should be abolished(FTLK:4/12) I enclose  my opinion  as an administrator why the Provincial Councils imposed on us by an outsider, Rajiv Gandhi,  should be abolished. Why the 13 th Amendment is inimical for our development and how it will […]

by Garvin Karunaratne  A Statement by Advisor Duminda Hulangamuva tells that our President Anura Kumara Dissanayake  has decided  to delay the implementation of the IMF’s decision that Imputed Taxes should be taxed. (EN: 2/12/24) Our President has to be congratulated for this decision. This is a minor decision but it is important to note that […]

By Garvin Karunaratne, former G.A. Matara In view of the new leash of life Sri Lanka has just got with the election of a President of Sri Lanka avowed to bring about poverty alleviation, I beg to make some suggestions based on my real experience. On my recent travel to Snowdonia in Wales, I happened […]

Garvin Karunaratne, PhD Michigan State University formerly of the SLAS, G.A.Matara It is reported that the IMF  has approved  the third review of Sri Lanka’s Economic Reform Programme. (AdaDerana:23/11/24) It is hoped that what is approved will enable the development of the country in  terms of increasing production in agriculture and also bringing about employment […]

by Garvin Karunaratne E-Con-E-News 3-9 th November in Lanka Web writes: “• ‘Garvin Karunaratne writes again today. I have read his Dahanayaka & red-onion affair several times in the Island. His telephone handling at the Marketing Department’s Tripoli HQ resembles Mountbatten’s war operations room.’” We did use phones in a remarkable way to move veg […]

Garvin Karunaratne  The High Commissioner for Sri Lanka from the UK has told us to to look to the UK for emulation re corruption. Perhaps our High C ommissioner is not aware of the fanciful gifts collected by Prime Minister Starmer and his wife recently.  https://www.adaderana.lk/news/103220/british-hc-recommends-sri-lankan-mps-learn-from-uk-system-to-curb-corruption- What a shame Garvin Karunaratne Additional information by Lanakweb […]

By Garvin Karunaratne , former G.A.Matara This is one of my early papers published four years ago. It is hoped that the new Government may find interesting ideas to follow to enable Sri Lanka’s economy to develop. A Story from Coffee. Ideas for our economic revival. Posted on September 14th, 2020. Republished in November 2024 […]