{"id":137635,"date":"2023-10-12T15:27:03","date_gmt":"2023-10-12T22:27:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=137635"},"modified":"2023-10-12T15:27:03","modified_gmt":"2023-10-12T22:27:03","slug":"open-letter-to-the-key-decision-makers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2023\/10\/12\/open-letter-to-the-key-decision-makers\/","title":{"rendered":"OPEN LETTER TO THE KEY DECISION-MAKERS"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>RANJITH SOYSA<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Your Excellency the President Ranil Wickramasinghe.<br>Hon Dinesh Gunawardane- Prime Minister,<br>Hon Mahinda Rajapaksa \u2013 the Former President,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>IMF RECIPE AND SRI LANKA&#8217;S FUNDS PARKED ABROAD.<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>All of you are shouldering the unenviable task of attending to the stabilization of the economy and&nbsp;we constantly hear of structural readjustment of the of the debt and the need<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u00a0to increase the tax receipts etc,\u00a0We, hear that more revenue is needed to meet the deficit. The Treasury Secretary said that &#8221; the\u00a0Government revenue has dipped from 22% to 8%\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>against&nbsp;the GDP while State expenses have gone up to 19%. He said,&nbsp;most of the government revenue must be reinvested to keep SOE\u2019s that are in Red and pay public servants who are&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>employed in most of them. By divesting some of these SOE\u2019s Sri Lanka can save huge&nbsp;amounts of \u2018money\u2019 that are channelled towards the upkeep of SOEs and they could be used for<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;other&nbsp;infrastructure projects and provide better facilities for health education and other key areas.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While we are attempting to sell even strategically important SOE&#8217;s such as Telecom, the Ports etc to solve the acute issue of deficit, the Minister of Justice provided a solution which&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>if pursued. he said that&nbsp;&#8220;it will be possible to settle&nbsp;all debts which Sri Lanka owes to other nations&#8221; He mentioned the necessity of compelling the VIPs who have parked abroad&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>US $ 56 billion, including US $ 9 billion in 2023!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An average Sri Lankan who is striving hard to make the ends meet and fighting heavy odds to keep the head above the water is expecting an answer from you why the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>export earnings and other remittances legally due to the country are allowed to be parked or invested overseas by a few business institutions and persons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a matter of extreme urgency, legislation should be approved or judiciary should be activated to give firm notice to the errant organizations and the personnel to bring back to the&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>country what is due, within a reasonable period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While perusing rational solutions to create a balanced economy the consumption of luxury and semi luxury goods must be restricted while supporting local production and<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Import substitution. The nation cannot forget that nearly 12.5% of its population is living in extreme poverty. Any further burden on this segment of the population by way of increased&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>cost of essential goods and services will only create social upheaval. The profit making and strategic Government managed organizations should not be sold as it is like selling the<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;family silver forcing the nation to keep on begging forever rather than utilizing these resources for effective national development,&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I only hope that the pursuing ones responsible for diverting the foreign funds of Sri Lanka even as an essential measure will not clash with the IMF model which insists on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>stability\u201d at any cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>RANJITH SOYSA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>RANJITH SOYSA Your Excellency the President Ranil Wickramasinghe.Hon Dinesh Gunawardane- Prime Minister,Hon Mahinda Rajapaksa \u2013 the Former President, IMF RECIPE AND SRI LANKA&#8217;S FUNDS PARKED ABROAD. All of you are shouldering the unenviable task of attending to the stabilization of the economy and&nbsp;we constantly hear of structural readjustment of the of the debt and the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ranjith-soysa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137635","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=137635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137635\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}