{"id":50947,"date":"2016-01-11T23:45:02","date_gmt":"2016-01-12T05:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=50947"},"modified":"2016-01-11T12:53:44","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T19:53:44","slug":"for-ranils-vision-to-fulfil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/01\/11\/for-ranils-vision-to-fulfil\/","title":{"rendered":"For Ranil’s vision to fulfil"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Paneetha Ameresekere\u00a0Courtesy The Ceylon Today<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
\n

Nonetheless, Ricardo Hausmann, the current Director of the Centre for International Development and a Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, seemingly threw a dampener to Wickremesinghe’s vision, when he said that Sri Lanka will have to first uplift its revenue base if the Premier was to fulfil his dream.<\/p>\n

He said that Sri Lanka’s revenue at 12.5% of GDP was too low, whereas a country like Sri Lanka should have a revenue ratio of 25% of GDP. Hausmann moderated the event.
\nMeanwhile, Nobel Laureate for Economics Joseph Stiglitz said that one way to increase revenue is to levy carbon taxes. Nonetheless, Sri Lanka appears to be doing just the opposite, by not only levying, but increasing taxes on environmentally friendly vehicles, when such increased levies should have had been passed on to pollutive, petrol guzzling vehicles. \u00a0Nevertheless, Wickremesinghe outlining his vision said that 50% of the island’s population lived within a radius of 75 miles from Colombo, the epicentre of the Premier’s ‘megapolis’ dream.<\/p>\n

However, global investor Geroge Soros, yet another speaker at the event, said that Sri Lanka’s development model should follow the Seoul model and not the Singapore model, simply because the latter doesn’t have sufficient land. He also said that the ‘elevated’ monorail type of transportation which is too expensive, doesn’t suit Colombo. “Better to have toll roads,” said Soros.
\nBefore developing a megapolis, Wickremesinghe should first scrutinize as to whether there is demand for such structures? China’s ghost cities are a prime example of where supply more than outpaced demand.
\nWhen Wickremesinghe’s uncle J.R. Jayewardene developed the Colombo Port, he rightfully eyed the Indian market, which then was a 500 million population strong, which since has exploded to 1.3 billion.<\/p>\n

Colombo Port is a hub port in South Asia, straddling between Singapore and Dubai, the other two hub ports in the region. So, Jayewardene’s port investment is paying off, in economic terms to the island.
\nWickremesinghe in his speech outlined the government’s plans to develop economic ties with India via a technological and economic pact with Sri Lanka’s giant neighbour. Nonetheless, India needs to open up its services and manufacturing sectors at least to Sri Lanka, if Wickremesinghe’s vision of making Sri Lanka a megapolis in the region is to reap dividends.
\nIf India’s doesn’t do that, then there will be no global demand for Sri Lanka’s megapolis, probably ending up similar to China’s ghost cities.<\/p>\n

Probably a silver lining is the proposed Chinese funded Colombo Port city project, now stalled for political reasons. If the Chinese are willing to fund that with no strings attached, then allow it to go its way.
\nBut with China’s economy currently crashing, one wonders whether Beijing is willing to restart the project, stalled by Colombo’s then new political masters, at least co-led by Wickremesinghe, after the regime change of 8 January, 2015.
\nIndia is the seeming star in the world, according to Stiglitz, with its economy growing at 6-7%, and Sri Lanka is rightfully placed geographically with the former being the latter’s closest neigbour. But is India willing to walk that extra mile on behalf of its tiny neighbour? That’s the million dollar question?
\nThe skill of Jayewardene, in negotiating the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord and ensuing that Delhi fulfils it to the letter; from an economic perspective, should also be Wickremesinghe’s game plan, when negotiating the proposed technology and economic agreement with India.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, his vision of a megapolis, if built, would be like Admiral Horthy without a ship, or, even worse and more closer and a recent home analogy, like former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Hambantota Harbour and international airport in the same locality, built at massive public expense where ships don’t dock and planes don’t land.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Paneetha Ameresekere\u00a0Courtesy The Ceylon Today Nonetheless, Ricardo Hausmann, the current Director of the Centre for International Development and a Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, seemingly threw a dampener to Wickremesinghe’s vision, when he said that Sri Lanka will have to first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50947","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=50947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}