{"id":147924,"date":"2025-02-09T18:00:48","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T01:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=147924"},"modified":"2025-02-09T18:00:48","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T01:00:48","slug":"usaid-crime-scenes-in-sri-lanka-how-about-the-imfs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2025\/02\/09\/usaid-crime-scenes-in-sri-lanka-how-about-the-imfs\/","title":{"rendered":"USAID Crime Scenes in Sri Lanka. How About the\u00a0IMF\u2019s\u2026?"},"content":{"rendered":"

e-Con e-News<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n
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blog: eesrilanka.wordpress.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Before you study the economics, study the economists!<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

e-Con e-News 02-08 February 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe they don\u2019t die uneasily like the rest of us. They simply pass away in their sleep. But pass, they do. The serendipitously synchronous slipping into samsara of 2 of Sri Lanka\u2019s nameboard oligarchs \u2013 Kandiah Balendra of Keells, & Don Harold Stassen Jayawardena of Distilleries\u2019 Co, this week, recalls their twin origins in the colonial English plantation agency houses; and more particularly, in the aftermath of the destabilization of the 1970-77 government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike, rampant post-\u201977 privatizations, and that boondoggle called the Mahaweli Development Scheme, the largest project in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The World Bank Country Report of 1980<\/strong> promised that by harnessing the great river\u2019s vast resources, the Mahaweli Project would transform<\/em><\/strong> Sri Lanka\u2019s economy within a decade. Even, export electricity to India! They ignored Central Bank advice not to accelerate the program. In the end, the Mahaweli project unearthed \u2018a gold mine, a hunting ground for thesis writers and professional researchers\u2019, and not just them: such carpetbaggers as Balendra and Jayawardena emerged. English, Canadian and Swedish \u2018donors\u2019 operating under \u2018development\u2019 agencies, minted millions, 100 times more than the locals, who \u2018received a bagatelle\u2019 instead. (The English even insisted, while constructing the \u2018Victoria Dam\u2019, on importing drinking water for their employees, saying local water was not good enough!<\/em>). Side by side with them, domestic merchants gathered \u2018sudden and tremendous affluence\u2019, as subagents and contractors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     It is no accident therefore that such irrigation schemes have failed to reproduce the creativity and solidarity of the purana gam sabha (ancient village councils), or of the vast temple lands \u2013 they had no such intentions. There was a change in the composition of agriculture (tractor and pesticide, replacing buffalo, and women), and the pattern of products, but there was no change in the structure of production, distribution and investment of profits. The irrigation policies of colonial and so-called postcolonial agents sought to reinforce the isolation and entrapping of peasants in smaller plots, instead of reinforcing larger organization through cooperatives and banks to enable rural industrialization. All the program did was to impose another layer of parasites over the peasants<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     It was in the midst of such a boondoggle (Mahaweli) that the Social Scientists\u2019 Association (SSA)<\/strong> organized its first (& last!?) research program, between 1980-82, on Agrarian Change in Sri Lanka<\/strong>, publishing its results as Capital & Peasant Production: Studies in the Continuity & Discontinuity of Agrarian Structures in Sri Lanka<\/em> (CAPP). ee<\/em><\/strong>\u2018s muse, SBD de Silva<\/strong>, whose work is included in the book, recalled CAPP<\/em> as one of SSA\u2019s finest publications, after GVS de Silva<\/strong>\u2018s The Alternatives: Socialism Or Barbarism<\/em>. The SSA\u2019s dedication to such scholarship did not last, diverted and corrupted as it was by the ensuing wars of terror (stick) and carrot (NGO slush funds). SSA had been formed in 1977 by social scientists who felt that research had failed to significantly<\/strong> study problems of \u2018development & change\u2019. SSA was meant to end the isolation of such scientists and serve as a forum for discussion and debate, to make contact with foreign scholars for research both \u2018nationally and socially relevant\u2019. Along the way, it became a coven for \u2018thesis writers & professional researchers\u2019, who gladly became agents of Canada\u2019s CIDA, USAID, Holland\u2019s Development Corporation (SNV) or England\u2019s ODI, ignoring both national and social relevance. Ethnicity<\/em><\/strong> and other atomizing identities, not agriculture or industry, were made \u2018the national question\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     ee<\/em><\/strong> aims to reproduce some parts of CAPP, especially as its research focused on the role of multinational corporations (MNCs, or TNCs) and especially the part played by Ceylon Tobacco Co (CTC, owned by British American Tobacco, BAT), a monopoly buyer which also directs peasant cultivation\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The power of MNCs, like CTC and Unilever, etc., (linked as they are to Jayawardena\u2019s corporate fronts, and Balendra\u2019s Keells \u2013 what FMCGs do Keells sell?) is also evident in their control of the media: how, for example, is Swiss Nestl\u00e9<\/strong>\u2019s name kept out of the reams of headlines about coconut prices? Or in the long tales about rice shortages, how England\u2019s ICI-CIC <\/strong>impoverishes cultivators let alone pollutes waterways (a culpability our ubiquitous ecomaniacs are funded to ignore)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     \u2026Poetry oozes somewhere out of Colombo\u2019s toxic Beira, surrounded by so-called modern \u2018millennial\u2019, \u2018hi-tech\u2019 companies and boutique hotels with fanciful but ultimately useless architecture, who are constantly giving sermons on all virtues and presenting themselves awards for \u2018green\u2019 this and \u2018gender\u2019 that\u2026  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2022 The USA & Other Success Stories<\/strong> \u2013 The media noise amplified by the re-entry of Donald Trump as US President recalls the varying techniques of white settler practices to depopulate continents<\/strong>. The BBC<\/em> fails to tell us on exactly who \u2018Trump says he ordered air strikes on \u2026in Somalia\u2019. This blood rite is portrayed as so commonplace. A hit.<\/em> No names. Just labels. Oh, OK, \u2018Islamic State Group\u2019. But is this IS like the US IS in Syria? It IS what it IS\u2026 An assassination or bombing is what a leader of the free world is supposed to announce as their real inauguration, after she, he or it is given access to the nuclear codes, which remind of their own and the world\u2019s mortality (\u2026with JD Vance but a heartbeat or earlobe away\u2026.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Whereas the US Democratic Party\u2019s liberal (though somewhat-Republican) godfather Thomas Jefferson (1801-09) sought to first ensnare the \u2018Indians\u2019 in debt and steal their land, Trump\u2019s last US presidential godfather Andrew Jackson (1829-37) forcibly evicted them from the US South, to extend the slave cotton plantations. By the time Trump\u2019s latest godfather William McKinley (1897-1901), the \u2018tariff king\u2019, who invaded Spain\u2019s colonies, was assassinated \u2013 by his successor, the roughriding Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09, whose ancestors were involved in pushing opium on China), who engineered a coup to steal Panama from Columbia \u2013 \u2018a newspaper as \u2018respectable\u2019 as the New York Times<\/em> could editorially threaten that those peoples who opposed the new world capitalist order would \u2018be extinguished like the North American Indian\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     This ee<\/em><\/strong> also recalls how that \u2018celebrity\u2019 \u2018success story\u2019 called the US economy has been so dependent on genocide and slavery (see ee Random Notes<\/em><\/strong>) \u2026 The USA keeps teaching us history every day and teaching us English too, as the first language of genocide, of slavery, all for free!, but our thought leaders are paid not to hear, not to see, not to think. The lessons may<\/em> appear to be another \u2018gift\u2019, but as with most of their gifts, they require maintenance, need further experts\u2019 services, need rusty parts to replace, which will have to be imported from them and paid for\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This ee<\/em><\/strong> concludes ee Focus\u2019<\/em><\/strong> cursory glimpse at Sri Lanka\u2019s relations with China prior to the European invasions. It ends, for now, by examining the formations of Portugal\u2019s Casa da India, Holland\u2019s Dutch East India Co, and its English avatars the English East India Co. They are the antecedents of multinationals, with budgets much larger than countries, like Unilever, and now US Exxon, who still dominate Sri Lanka\u2019s economy. As our historical record notes, the departure of China from the ocean brought about an era awash in constant warfare in Sri Lanka, resulting in the massive destruction of cities, villages and structures, and the dissolution of the earlier social order\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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USA Watching the JVP Squirm:<\/strong> Colombo\u2019s commercial and financial oligarchy have survived every single change of government<\/strong>, so now watch how they plan to \u2018manage\u2019 the early toppling of yet another \u2018popular\u2019 government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The burdens of high interest costs on Treasury bonds are severely constraining the fiscal space available for critical social protection programs. The Government\u2019s domestic interest payments consume the largest proportion of Government revenue, according to the IMF\u2019s twin, the World Bank. Dhanusha Pathirana of the Institute of Political Economy (IPE) sees \u2018a valuable opportunity to alleviate this pressure by reducing the interest paid on bonds held outside the public\u2019s EPF and ETF\u2019. This could result in substantial savings of approximately Rs600billion, which could be redirected to support essential public services and social welfare initiatives, to arrest the escalating cost of living, the deteriorating state of healthcare and education, and \u2018create fiscal space for long-term industrialization goals, facilitating a shift of resources from unproductive to productive sectors\u2019. (see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The IMF\u2019s padrone, the USA (with the EU wagging along) wants to see how the JVP will manage to keep its promises to the people within the prison house of their economic prescriptions and restrictions. This is why the International Monetary Fund (IMF<\/strong>) pops up soon after the car importers are flung their pounds of flesh (roadkill). Our economists refuse to divulge how the USA\u2019s IMF profits by forcing Sri Lanka to import foreign machinery, particularly private vehicles, especially private cars. But this techno \u2018dependence\u2019 is key to understanding how non-settler colonies are maintained as shitholes to lubricate Trump\u2019s profundity\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The IMF\u2019s appearance this week \u2013 to \u2018discuss\u2019 the 4th<\/sup> tranche \u2013 is covered in billowing clouds of smokey foggery. Here goes: the IMF\u2019s Executive Board of Directors will, by the end of this month, be presented with details of \u2018the government\u2019s staff-level agreement with the IMF\u2019\u2026 \u2018on the third review\u2019\u2026about the deals made, regarding the \u2018extended arrangement<\/em> under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) of US$3billion\u2019. \u2018Once the approval is granted by the IMF Executive Board, Sri Lanka is expected to release the fourth tranche of the extended loan, amounting to $333million.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     All this is based on \u2018the submission of the 2025 budget consistent with the IMF program\u2019s parameters\u2019. Yet what kind of budget can be devised within such constraints?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Midst the media foggery it is hard to determine exactly what kind of deals \u2013 especially privatisation (see ee<\/em><\/strong> Industry, Litro) have been agreed upon. Like former President R Premadasa, who simply renamed privatization as peoplization, they may simply change what such sell-offs are labelled\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Meanwhile, \u2018US President Donald Trump\u2019s \u2018pause\u2019 on foreign assistance<\/strong> has tied USAID\u2019s purse strings and left its Lankan partners in a state of disarray<\/strong>\u2019 <\/strong>\u2013 all recipients of US philanthropy have less than 90 days to align any future goodwill with US foreign policy.  Despite, the momentary demonization of USAID and the UNHRC, apt though it be, the omission of the IMF, World Bank and WTO suggests a wilful innumeracy, let alone studied illiteracy\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Contents:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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USAID Crime Scenes in Sri Lanka. How About the IMF\u2019s…?<\/a><\/blockquote>