{"id":42947,"date":"2015-04-07T17:29:57","date_gmt":"2015-04-07T23:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=42947"},"modified":"2015-04-07T10:24:29","modified_gmt":"2015-04-07T17:24:29","slug":"dud-governance-3-months-4-foreign-trips-by-president-and-14-by-foreign-minister-and-the-economy-in-doldrums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/04\/07\/dud-governance-3-months-4-foreign-trips-by-president-and-14-by-foreign-minister-and-the-economy-in-doldrums\/","title":{"rendered":"Dud Governance: 3 Months 4 Foreign Trips by President and 14 by Foreign Minister and the Economy in Doldrums!"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Dilrook Kannangara<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>It is absolute plunder of weakening foreign reserves. Although they promised good governance, their dud governance has proven a corrupt disaster already.<\/p>\n<p>When the Rajapaksas left office, country\u2019s foreign reserves stood at $7.8 bn. Thanks to unlimited plunder of foreign reserves, it has now fallen to $6.8 bn. What is noteworthy is reserves measured in months of imports is in its worst\u00a0now since the war. Increasing inflation (and interest rates), depreciating rupee and borrowings have caused $1.63 more debt value within just 3 months. The Treasury plans to raise 400 billion rupee debt to pay for state salaries increase by the Sirisena regime.<\/p>\n<p>Gold reserves held by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka have also fallen from $880 mn when Rajapaksas left to $866 mn by March. Of course the downward trend of the Colombo Stock Market indices and the depreciation of the rupee continue unchecked since the last regime left office. Who is robbing state coffers as never before?<\/p>\n<p>What is more alarming is this drop comes during the tourist season (November to March) when foreign currency inflows are the highest during the year. For foreign currency reserves to collapse to such low levels during this season, the plunder must be many times more than the numbers indicate.<\/p>\n<p>Exuberant spend on foreign trips is nothing new to Sri Lanka and it has worsened in the current regime. Barely 3 months passed since it assuming office and the president and the family have made four foreign trips already. Daham Sirisena is carrying out his own foreign trips at state expense. He was already in China on his own when President Sirisena visited China. Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera is almost always overseas with 14 foreign trips to his credit already.<\/p>\n<p>Election sweeteners offered by the Sirisena regime also cost a fortune. Disruption of Chinese investments (Sri Lanka\u2019s largest investor) also contributes to the impending economic disaster. IMF has already refused to help and available options are fast drying out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dilrook Kannangara It is absolute plunder of weakening foreign reserves. Although they promised good governance, their dud governance has proven a corrupt disaster already. When the Rajapaksas left office, country\u2019s foreign reserves stood at $7.8 bn. Thanks to unlimited plunder of foreign reserves, it has now fallen to $6.8 bn. What is noteworthy is reserves [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dilrook-kannangara"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42947","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=42947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}