{"id":148282,"date":"2025-03-02T18:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-03-03T01:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=148282"},"modified":"2025-03-02T18:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T01:13:09","slug":"ceylon-tobacco-company-the-hijacking-of-state-banks-ministry-of-agriculture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2025\/03\/02\/ceylon-tobacco-company-the-hijacking-of-state-banks-ministry-of-agriculture\/","title":{"rendered":"Ceylon Tobacco Company & the Hijacking of State Banks & Ministry of\u00a0Agriculture"},"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 23 February \u2013 01 March 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Our economy is running on conditions.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There is no economic independence or sovereignty<\/strong> \u2013<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

it is under probation and being monitored.\u2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 President AK Dissanayake, 2025<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The nature of the political life of our island must be understood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were a colony, a benevolently administered dependency. So long<\/p>\n\n\n\n

as our dependence remained unquestioned<\/strong> our politics were a joke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 The Mimic Men<\/em>, VS Naipaul, 1967<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so it turns out be, as other leaders \u2013 in Sri Lanka and around the world \u2013 have long known: that a party may \u2018be in office, but not in power\u2019 (see ee Quotes<\/em><\/strong>, Cheddi Jagan). This ee<\/em><\/strong> reproduces some choice & apt excerpts from Sir Vidia Naipaul\u2019s 1967 novel (see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>), which is said to be partly based on the repeated Anglo-US coups in Guyana in the 1950s and 1960s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Soon we saw that there had been no need, that our power was air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had no trade unions behind us, no organized capital.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Mimic Men<\/em>, VS Naipaul<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so the \u2018stark admission\u2019 from Sri Lanka\u2019s President, has opposition critics declaring that the NPP government \u2013 which \u2018has so far backed down from its campaign promise of renegotiating the unfavorable debt restructuring agreement brokered by the IMF\u2019 \u2013 has, in fact, done so knowingly and willingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The IMF\u2019s \u2018ambitious and often brutal austerity programs\u2019<\/strong> are indeed politically, socially & economically unfeasible. The government\u2019s new budget missing the IMF\u2019s deficit target, appears to be due to its promise to resume \u2018public capital investment\u2019<\/strong> \u2013 nationally owned assets used for industrial productivity. However, these \u2018public investment will be the first line of expenditure to be slashed\u2019, predicts Shiran Illanperuma (see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>)\u2026 unless\u2026 unless\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The \u2018Global South now spends more in debt payments than it receives in grants & loans<\/strong>\u2019, and we are \u2018cursed with low growth rates due to a lack of investment\u2019, especially \u2018investment in the manufacturing sector\u2019, which \u2018is key to technological upgrading, upskilling labor, and unlocking rapid growth in the Global South\u2019. Instead, \u2018services have accounted for 81% of new foreign investment projects between 2020-23\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     So, even as there is a \u2018renewed push\u2019 for industrialization across many countries \u2013 from President Lula da Silva\u2019s New Industry Brazil (Nova Ind\u00fastria Brasil\/NIB) program to the Made-in-China 2025 program, \u2018it is unlikely that any government in Sri Lanka can formulate & implement such cohesive plans without confronting the IMF & private creditors which have severely restricted the country\u2019s economic sovereignty\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Meanwhile,  there was news this week too that the US-dominated IMF and World Bank are tying aid to Lebanon to \u2018normalization\u2019 of relations with Israel, and the disarming of Hezbollah (see ee Sovereignty<\/strong>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Has anyone noticed the eerie homophony between Sri Lanka\u2019s SERU<\/strong> (State-Owned Enterprise Restructing Unit) and Ukraine\u2019s SOERA<\/strong> (State-Owned Enterprises Reform Activity in Ukraine)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Another fake WWF (World Wrestling Federation) drama \u2013 better called, dissimulation \u2013 was staged this week in the USA\u2019s Oval Office, showing Ukraine\u2019s leader bantering with the US President. Then there is the kalabala (yet more kayfabe?) about USAID\u2019s supposed demise, which is meant to divert from the real story:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So keep dreaming! The US is reorganizing & outsourcing Empire<\/strong>. It is attempting to freeze their war on Russia (as it has done with its wars on Korea & China \u2013 Taiwan). The US is not ending their war in Ukraine, which they have all but lost. This is also evident in the US Vice-President JD Vance\u2019s Munich speech, telling Europe to buy more US weapons rather than make their own, to attack Russia and China. Their Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE device is meant to sharpen \u2018the tools of the US Empire \u2013 not dismantle them\u2019 (see ee Sovereignty<\/em><\/strong>, US is Reorganizing\/Outsourcing Empire)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So Trump will surely come for Sri Lanka\u2019s rare earth minerals next (if they haven\u2019t already).<\/strong> US President Donald Trump is reported as yearning for rare earth minerals from Canada, Greenland & Ukraine so as to downgrade Europe\u2019s & their settler states\u2019 reliance upon Chinese exports of these hard-to-find materials. Like from Ukraine, the US can now demand, \u2018Pay your debt or we\u2019ll swipe \u2013 errrrr, swap <\/em>\u2013 Sinharaja & all our graphite & yet unrevealed minerals & fuels in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recall: Ecuador\u2019s government completed a Galapagos Debt for Nature Swap<\/strong> in May 2023, repurchasing $1.6billion of Ecuador\u2019s outstanding bonds at ~40 cents on the dollar, saving Ecuador $1.1bn in debt service repayments. The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)<\/strong>, funded by the Latin American Development Bank<\/strong> (CAF), acted as advisor to Ecuador\u2019s Ministry of Economy & Finance on this \u2018green\u2019 transaction. 5 months later, Quito ratified the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA)<\/strong> with Washington. In December 2024 Ecuador\u2019s President and Banana Co. Oligarch Daniel Noboa permitted the US military to use the environmentally fragile Galapagos Islands as a base for regional surveillance, to combat \u2018drug trafficking, illegal fishing\u2019 to prevent \u2018violent conflicts\u2026 between narco-terrorist groups fighting over drug export routes\u2019. Sound familiar? The archipelago had been declared a World Natural Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1978.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Last week ee<\/em><\/strong> began our glimpse into the over-100-year monopoly of Ceylon Tobacco Co, owned by British American Tobacco (BAT). CTC has deprived the country of billions through such \u2018normal\u2019 multinational corporate (MNC) practices as transfer pricing<\/strong>, concealing this data aided by such giant accounting firms as Deloitte, etc. This ee<\/em><\/strong> continues Charles Abeysekera\u2019s study: showing how CTC has along the way hijacked not just the Ministry of Agriculture<\/strong>, but also the state banks \u2013 Bank of Ceylon <\/strong>and People\u2019s Bank<\/strong> (see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     <\/strong>Our story begins with the traditional village economy still based on paddy & highland crops including vegetables; cultivating tobacco only for itinerant Muslim traders \u2013 then gradually supplanted by this Anglo-American multinational. This ee<\/em><\/strong> examines \u2018CTC in the Mahaweli Scheme\u2019 \u2013 its active involvement in non-tobacco activities, which their merchant media present to the public as acts of benevolence<\/em>. Such MNCs or TNCs (transnational corporations) have penetrated into peasant agriculture, also replacing the government and its agencies: irrigation<\/strong> and land development departments, state banks<\/strong>, the cooperative system<\/strong>, and state marketing agencies<\/strong>, totally controlling smallholding peasants, leaving them no choice over crops and cultivation practices. They have also been destroying the forest cover, with the Forest Department reserving the right to the Company to cut such trees for fuel, setting up such companies as Charlanka Ltd<\/strong> \u2013 a joint venture between the USAID-funded Enterprise Development Inc. and the Sri Lanka State Timber Corporation!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The story describes how CTC established a restricted market by creating a new layer of middlemen mediating between CTC and tobacco growing peasants, who had no direct dealings with either the CTC or the banks. TNCs have, in effect, replaced the state\u2026 Here then is the untold story of the sabotaging of the Paddy Marketing Board<\/strong>, by CTC, etc, just as Sathosa<\/strong> (Ceylon Wholesale Establishment, CWE) has been hijacked by Unilever<\/strong>, and the Fertilizer Corp. by England\u2019s ICI-CIC<\/strong> etc. Most interesting is their control over technology:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Contrary to the large colonial enterprises of the past,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TNCs are more interested in the control of activities<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

than in the actual ownership of natural resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real basis for their powerful position, therefore,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

is not the property of land or mineral deposits<\/strong> but the<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ownership of the technical process<\/strong> which it is difficult to<\/p>\n\n\n\n

attack by the normal procedures of expropriation & nationalisation<\/strong>.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 EH Jacoby<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, England\u2019s CTC has been shutting down their reliance on local tobacco farmers. This week CTC was reported as claiming its revenue fell down in the December 2024 quarter, due to smuggling<\/em><\/strong>. However, other countries point out that it is the cigarette companies themselves who are smuggling tobacco and cigarettes into their countries, to avoid taxes. And even better: it is the sophisticated corporate tobacco networks, with their enormous \u2018supply chains\u2019 of marketers and salesmen, who are also involved in smuggling prohibited drugs!!! Gangsters, anyone?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, media in Sri Lanka reported that \u2018Lord Swire\u2019 visited Port City\u2026 England once forbade the Sinhala calling the Buddha \u2013 \u2018King\u2019 \u2013 Budhurajananwahanse<\/strong>. They wanted the Buddha referred to as Lord Buddha<\/em>, because England\u2019s King ruled over all of us, including the Buddha. So now here comes Lord Swire, real name: Hugo George William Swire \u2013 and how did this Swire become a Lord like the Buddha, in English? The Swires were big profiteers off English slave cotton from the USA, then turned to carrying opium on their shipping lines (P&O,<\/strong> anyone?) from India to China, linking to the pirates Jardine-Matheson<\/strong> (who became the biggest landowners & employers in Hong Kong, and are still!) and set up the opium-financing HongKong & Shanghai Bank<\/strong>! Lordy! Lordy! Lordy!\u2026 Buddhu Ammo!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Germany\u2019s just elected chancellor Friedrich Merz once represented BlackRock in Germany, 2016-20. <\/strong>BlackRock has become one of the largest non-German shareholders in many of the country\u2019s most important companies \u2013 from Deutsche Bank<\/strong> to Volkswagen<\/strong>, BMW<\/strong> to Siemens <\/strong>(which helped hijack Ceylon Steel Corporation<\/strong>). It turns out Europeincluding their settler governments & their economic systems have been fully privatized entities effectively run by corporations & banks. Then again, let\u2019s recall England\u2019s Royal African Co<\/strong> with its monopoly over the slavery of Africans, and the East India Co<\/strong> later morphing into the opium-dealing \u2018private English\u2019 Jardine-Matheson<\/strong> (which still controls Hong Kong) and palm oil-loving Unilever (which still controls SL), Anglo-American<\/strong> (which still controls South Africa), CTC<\/strong>, ICI-CIC<\/strong>, etc\u2026?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

_________<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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Ceylon Tobacco Company & the Hijacking of State Banks & Ministry of Agriculture<\/a><\/blockquote>