{"id":116271,"date":"2021-07-18T15:54:21","date_gmt":"2021-07-18T22:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=116271"},"modified":"2021-07-18T15:54:21","modified_gmt":"2021-07-18T22:54:21","slug":"what-is-the-truth-about-the-money-printing-story-in-sri-lanka-is-it-the-art-of-discourse-in-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/07\/18\/what-is-the-truth-about-the-money-printing-story-in-sri-lanka-is-it-the-art-of-discourse-in-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"WHAT IS THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MONEY PRINTING STORY IN SRI LANKA: IS IT THE ART OF DISCOURSE IN POLITICS?"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Money\nprinting has become a folk story of opposition politicians in Sri Lanka where\nthe story has been popular political rhetoric since the 1970s, and many people\nand news media in the country use this discourse without a clear understanding\nof the process of money printing. Is it a process like political leaflets printing\nin local print shops? When listening to political speeches of the opposition,\nthe public gets an impression that money printing is like death notice printing\nfor funerals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why\nthis point has been reiterated on the political platforms? No other reason to\nshow. The economic truth of printed money, which is tangible assets that\ndeteriorate the value of money. When more money is available in the market\nwhilst the supply of goods and services is in a shortage or deteriorating, many\nnegative economic outcomes could be seen in the country. When more money is in\nthe hands of people, prices of goods and services would be skyrocketed. This\nenvironment would create hyperinflation the prices of demand and supply will go\nup. Unless the production process has an increasing trend proportionately to\nthe increase in money supply, inflation will achieve a rising trend. Therefore,\nit needs to maintain economic stability than printing money (production of\npaper money). It is observed that when politicians are in the opposition, the\nrhetoric of money printing uses either to popular on political platforms or\nattracting clapping of people to the discourse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Money\nprinting is an economic issue in every country and many countries have not used\nthis as a political issue. Developed countries such as the USA print money, but\nthe political power of such countries, money printing has not become an issue.\nThe purchasing power of the US dollar has radically declined during the last\nseveral decades. The major reason for such a situation is they attempt to\ncontrol the negative effects of money printing with a genuine attempt to\nmaintain the value of money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Negative\neffects on money printing peaked when Mr.R.Premadasa was president and\nInternational Monetary Fund imposed controls against money printing. However, the\nweak policy has been continuing in the country as the economic policies used\ndid not support building a production economy. The open economic policy adopted\nin that period sanctioned imports when shortage incurred in consumer goods with\nthe support of borrowed money. People used to the policy and if there is no\nborrowed or earned money,  printing has\nbeen the popular policy of the government. The technique was to issue bonds\nwhen investors have not bought bonds the Central Bank invested with printed\nmoney. This has been the popular show of the monetary policy of Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Money\nprinting is theoretically based on several factors. They are the volume of\nexports, the volume of foreign reserves, inward foreign investment, inward\nremittances increasing population, and many other factors. As a member of the\nIMF, Sri Lanka cannot print money though it wants, IMF monitors the monetary\npolicy of all countries and Sri Lanka cannot overrule the IMF. Neither the\nopposition nor the public in Sri Lanka knows about this process and they shout\nlike parrots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nmost popular government policy is to present deficit budgets and supplement\nestimates besides the budget for expenditure. The covering of the budget gap is\ndone printed money by the Central Bank as the investors of government bonds are\nmuch less than expected. The truth of the money printing story in the country\nis this, and people are not explained by the government and money printing\nrhetoric is continuing. However, the discourse of money printing is bashful,\nand the situation should explain people using simple examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\nlong as current economic policy is used without deviation, by either government\nor the opposition, the money printing story remains in the country and the\noption to get out of the problem is to begin a unity government without\nopposition and explain the public true economic situation of the country.    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS Money printing has become a folk story of opposition politicians in Sri Lanka where the story has been popular political rhetoric since the 1970s, and many people and news media in the country use this discourse without a clear understanding of the process of money printing. Is it a process like political […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edward-theophilus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}