Garvin Karunaratne Mere talk is not what is required in Sri Lanka’s situation of today- massive unemployment and lack of incomes- poverty for the people at large- the vast majority who cannot today be assured of even two meals a day. It is on record that children are not even going to school- they are […]

By Garvin Karunaratne It may be a good idea for all contenders to become our President to understand that Sri Lanka is today a highly indebted country. When President Gotabhaya ceded the reigns of administration our foreign debt was at $ 56 billion.  Now in 2024 it is almost double. The Sunday Times of 9/6/24 […]

By Garvin Karunaratne  Professor Paul Krugman said in 1999 , in the short run. The World is lurching from crisis to crisis, all of them crucially involving the problem of generating sufficient demand. Japan is finding that  conventional monetary and fiscal policies  aren’t enough.  If it can happen to Japan how sure can we be […]

Garvin Karunaratne It is sad to reflect that DIG Munidasa (Muni) is no more.  As a relative of mine he was very close to us and very helpful on many an occasion. Muni hails from a family group  from Pilane, Galle, that has greatly contributed to Mother Lanka- he as a senior officer in the […]

Garvin Karunaratne, Former GA Matara Proceeding to Scotland from  London after a gap of a few years  I came across many new wind turbines again and again. They all churn out electricity from the wind power, mind you the wind power is far less than in our hills at Nuwara Eliya and Madugoda. I have […]

Garvin Karunaratne, PhD. Michigan Stae University, Is it not sad that Sri Lanka, a country that had no foreign debt in 1977, is today having a foreign debt of $ 91 billion( Prof. Charitha Herath:Lankadeepa- 7/2/24) When President Gotabhaya left the debt was $ 56 billion. Sri Lanka is a country of ample resources, a […]

Garvin Karunaratne My We alleviate poverty that afflicts over half of us Mind you By the Sixties we had alleviated poverty We did control our economy then, made things. We imported only what we could not make In 1977 we embraced the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Sent all development workers to the barracks yet we pay […]

By Garvin Karunaratne The IMF was the international organization which the United Nations at its inception was intended to organize the economies of the World .This did really happen till 1977 when the Washington Consensus the ideas of World Bank chief McNamara, and President Ronald Regan took over world development and altered the course of […]

By Garvin Karunaratne The Mirror Business Page of 16/2/2024 tells it all: Asserts any disruption to the programme would create high economic costs, including growth setbacks, loss of confidence and prolonged negative investment sentiments. (From Sri Lanka’s Economic revival hinges on IMF Deal”) Our President himself tells us:. We made an economic plan with the IMF. […]

by Garvin Karunaratne Thanks to Cabinet Spokesman, Minister Bandula Gunawardena for revealing that the Sri Lankan Government is running a shortfall of Rs 10 trillion to meet its expenditure with its revenue…We collect only Rs 3 trillion while the expenses are Rs 13 trillion”(The Morning20​/02/2024) This reveals a situation of sheer bankruptcy, a situation out […]

By Garvin Karunaratne, former GA Matara My warnings about an unbridled Central Bank have come true with the Central Bank mandarins deciding a salary increase of as much as seventy percent, while over half our population lives in sheer poverty having to forgo at least a meal everyday. My Warnings appeared in Lanka Web of […]

Garvin Karunaratne, Ph.D. Michigan State University‚  The achievement of the CFTC- the Commonwealth  Fund, creating employment for over three million youths in Bangladesh may be of interest. 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 […]

Garvin Karunaratne former SLAS, GA Matara.  What the country needs immediately is a programme of employment creation and poverty alleviation where the unemployed will be making things that are being imported today. Last week I saw a packet of pastry sheets made in Malaysia for sale at Cargills.  An industry to make pastry sheets can […]

By Garvin Karunaratne I am quoting an earlier paper of mine which if considered can develop the sad state of tourism in our country.  The only addition I make is about the takeover of hotel bookings on the Internet by giant foreign companies that have also taken over advertising. Our tourist board authorities have to […]

By Garvin Karunaratne In the Fifth Century we built Yodha Ela in Anuradhapura District at a gradient of five inches in a mile. Today, we are begging for dollars from the IMF. Our leaders were fooled by the IMF and A country that was never in Debt, got weaned to live on loans and handouts . Our […]

By Garvin Karunaratne All of us do some jobs to find a living and later in retirement get to oblivion, some become activists, others don robes, finding paths for self-salvation. The greatness in Mahindapala is that in unpaid lifetime, in retirement, he fought for Sri Lanka for the downtrodden, and provided ideas for new paths […]

By Garvin Karunaratne  former G.A. Matara It is time to stop political bickering and take action before we totally fail in agriculture and millions face death due to the lack of food.  In view of the attempts by our President to boost our agriculture, it may be worthwhile to ascertain what did happen to the […]

by Garvin Karunaratne. In the Fifth Century we built the Yodha Ela at a gradient of six inches in a mile- so miniscule a gradient that defies the irrigation engineers of today. By 1970, we became self sufficient in producing rice- then we had no poverty as we provided rice free to all on a […]

by Garvin Karunaratne 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 that printing money causes inflation […]

Garvin Karunaratne, former G.A. Matara As a small country with little resources and being harassed by the IMF today, we should know how to manage ourselves within the powerblocks of the World. As Sir John Kotalawala once said we have to be non aligned to any power block. In short, we are today a bankrupt […]

By Garvin Karunaratne Posted on March 4th, 2021,republished in view of attempts to implement the 13 th Amendment  I have in several of my Papers detailed as to  Why the 13 th Amendment should be abolished. I have detailed my experiences in my eighteen years’ service in the Administrative Service implementing development programmes islandwide. To […]

Garvin Karunaratne, former GA Matara  I fist met Martin when I was appointed the Government Agent at Matara in March 1971. A Senior Clerical Officer in the Katcheri, his work was impeccable, Martin was more a poet. He could turn a stone to gold- detail anything in an amazing manner that evoked a catharsis within […]

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 Ph.D. Michigan State University Former SLAS, Government Agent, Matara In the Seventies, the IMF took on the new role of prescribing the path to be taken by the Third World countries to run their economies. This was the Structural Adjustment Program the IMF foisted on every country that sought financial help. President Ronald Regan and Prime Minister […]

by Garvin Karunaratne, former GA Matara Economist Eran Wicks has rightly pointed out that we in our poor budget, are wasting funds and spending on unnecessary items. He has rightly said that of the Rs 254 million for the Highways Ministry as much as 85% is to be spent on Highways.(The Morning:1/12/23) I have for […]

Garvin Karunaratne Former GA Matara 1971-1973 Having read what the newspapers detail on the first day of the budget, I get the impression that Poverty Alleviation and Training and Empovering the unemployed to become productive, making what the economy needs has not been given a place . Opening new universities and selling off post offices […]

Garvin Karunaratne War is War where lands are conquered. People are essentially a disposable quantity. That is what we are seeing in Gaza, intense bombing reducing homes to rubble where the occupants are buried. People being displaced. That is Today’s civilized order to clear out Gaza for occupation! We are also seeing the indomitable human […]

Garvin Karunaratne Director at Center for Global Poverty Alleviation In my endless travels in countries in three continents, the only country where wind turbines have been continuously sited in the coastal areas happens to be Sri Lanka. In Lanzorette in the Canaries, firstly the authorities built two turbines on the coast, but later they realized […]

By Garvin Karunaratne It is reported that our President Ranil Wickremasinghe is seking th advise from foreign countries like Thailand to resurrect agricultural development in Sri Lanka. We need not go far. Lets go back to the Seventies when we did have a marvellous extension service that enabled us to become self sufficient in paddy, […]

By Garvin Karunaratne  Sri Lanka, a country in grave foreign debt- as much as $ 56 billion in 2023, a country that did not owe a dollar to anyone in the early Seventies, had better organize devices to use the Recently won $3 billion tranche from the IMF for economic development to bring about production […]