{"id":67602,"date":"2017-07-05T23:29:36","date_gmt":"2017-07-06T05:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=67602"},"modified":"2017-07-05T16:18:12","modified_gmt":"2017-07-05T23:18:12","slug":"ideas-to-resuscitate-the-sri-lankan-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/07\/05\/ideas-to-resuscitate-the-sri-lankan-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Ideas to resuscitate the Sri Lankan Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Garvin Karunratne, Ph.D. Michigan State University<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The Sri Lankan economy is truly in the doldrums. The BBC has recently in a spate of news broadcasts, derogatorily questioned: Is Sri Lanka Up for Sale.\u201d(28\/5\/2017). This was preceded on 26 th June 2017, by another news item, A Country Trapped in Debt\u201d. Their\u00a0 Is Sri Lanka Up for sale\u201d quotes the Chinese taking over key assets and the foray of Chinese banks to finance the Hambantota Port ( $ 1.3 billion), Norochicolai Power Plant ( $1.35 billion) and the Mattala Airport($ 200 million).<\/p>\n

It is true that in recent years Sri Lanka has had to depend on Chinese and Indian loans for development tasks. That really happened when other sources dried up.<\/p>\n

The BBC news item quotes Forbes: Sri Lanka has a debt problem. After a decade of taking out\u00a0 huge loans to build large scale infrastructure projects the country is now struggling to make payments. Sri Lanka owes $ 58.3 billion to foreign lenders and 94% of its revenue go to debt servicing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Getting into debt to finance infrastructure, if the infrastructure can be classified as developmental,\u00a0 can be justified. Forbes should also know that from the outset in 1977 when Sri Lanka was weaned into the Washington Consensus-i.e. the Structural Adjustment Programme of the IMF ,\u00a0 the debts were incurred not to build up the infrastructure or for any development purpose. Instead, the loans were used to enable the rich to enjoy life- go on foreign travel, send off their children for studies abroad, import anything and live a life of luxury all at the cost of the country getting into debt.<\/p>\n

Another important factor is that the loaned funds came into our country, got into our books as a debt and also left our country back to the donor country with profits in payment for the luxury imports, for luxury cars and for funding their universities, for airlines, multinationals- creating profits for shareholders. The economists at Forbes should also read John Perkins\u2019 book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman , <\/u>\u00a0where Perkins, working for an IMF affiliated multinational, drafted projects\u00a0 with fabricated statistics where the loans that came in, found their way back to the donors in the form of payments for consultations, reports, conferences etc. leaving the country indebted. The projects were also prone to failure.\u00a0 Good economic structuring to lend and get back the funds,\u00a0 while simultaneously saddling the countries with a foreign debt.<\/p>\n

Forbes is right about the current debt. However Forbes should also know how a country that had no foreign debt in 1977 , was advised and told by the IMF to open up its economy, remove control over its foreign exchange earnings, relax the use of foreign exchange\u00a0 and when there was a shortage of\u00a0 foreign exchange, directed to get loans to finance this luxury of living beyond one\u2019s means. This was the IMF\u2019s Structural Adjustment Programme which did not help the countries but actually restructured the economies of the countries to become colonial vassals of the Superpowers once again. This time the \u2018conquest\u2019 was not with cannon but through financial missiles. The IMF had sinister motives: At first the IMF\u00a0 gave loans at low interest with long grace periods- at times 10 years, to lure the countries into their ploy. The long grace periods meant\u00a0 that the leaders who took the loans were mostly out of office when the time came to pay up the loans.\u00a0 Gradually the IMF backed out and the governments were forced to get loans\u00a0 at\u00a0 high interest from commercial sources.\u201d(From: How the IMF Sabotaged Third World Development (Kindle)by Garvin Karunaratne)<\/p>\n

As a consequence of this misadventure in following the IMF, Sri Lanka is today an indebted country where we have to raise further loans to service the debt. One of our\u00a0 foremost economists, Nimal Sanderatne has said, We have mismanaged our foreign borrowing by using a large amount of borrowed funds on unproductive infrastructure projects and living beyond our means\u2026 the country is in a foreign debt trap as the Government must\u00a0 borrow\u00a0 to meet annual debt repayments and interest obligations.\u201d(SundayTimes<\/u>:23\/4\/2017)<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka is not a lone victim. Speaking of African countries, no less a personage than Professor Jeffery Sachs who was once on the IMF associated payroll as an expert to several countries says that By the start of the Twenty First\u00a0 Century, Africa was poorer than in the late 1960s when the IMF and the World Bank had first arrived on the scene.\u201d(The End of Poverty<\/u>) In my words, The IMF has actually bled the Third World countries to death. The IMF has virtually destroyed the economies of countries that did not have a foreign debt and did have self reliant economies to become indebted so that the countries came within the dictates of the Superpowers and their financial institution- the IMF.\u201d\u00a0 Ghana<\/u> an African country that had a viable economy in the Seventies is in terrible straits today. Its currency the Cedi\u00a0 that had a value of Cedi 5.7 to the GBP in 1983 has\u00a0 by 2017 dropped to 5.62 New Cedi to the Pound which is equal to 56,200 Old Cedi. This marks a devaluation of 986,000%. Ghana in February 2014 even had to restrict withdrawals of foreign exchange to $ 10,000 and that only for foreign travel.<\/p>\n

On the whole the IMF has succeeded in restructuring the economies of countries like Sri Lanka for the country to be unable to bring about any development.\u00a0 The restructuring took the form of taking the control of the foreign exchange of the country out of the hands of the Government, liberalizing the use of foreign exchange, abolition of the development infrastructure so that there will be no development whatsoever, a high interest policy to bring about the closure of local manufactures, accepting the private sector as the sole method for development and the abolition of \u00a0national planning.<\/p>\n

The only path now offered by the IMF and the World Bank is for countries to\u00a0\u00a0 attract foreign investors(FDI).<\/u> The countries are advised to open up the country\u00a0 further for foreign investors, who bring a small amount of foreign exchange initially and set up some business which will bring in profits that can be repatriated. They are offered tax holidays..\u00a0 McDonalds, KFC, Burger King and Pizza Hut are all in this category and milk dry the countries for profits.. They import even paper cups with the foreign exchange of the country. The profits earned in local currency are repatriated in foreign exchange\u2026The earnings of the US Multinationals in 2007 from overseas trade outlets amounted to $ 99.1 billion. From Africa\u00a0 the amount\u00a0 netted was \u00a0$ 6.1 billion while from Asia it was $ 22.2 billion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another type of investment is for investors to come in and develop Water Projects<\/u>, say a small hydro electricity plant.\u00a0 Four miles from Gampola on the Nuwara Eliya Road is a perennial stream flowing from Udagama and an uncle of mine had tapped this stream at the end of his estate for power with which he used to run the tea factory and his bungalow.\u00a0 I wanted him to develop the hydro project on his own. Instead the Electricity Board lured him to close down the hydro plant and buy power from the national grid. When I met my uncle years later he lamented that the Electricity Board had jacked up their rates and running the factory was uneconomical.\u00a0 Now my uncle is no more and the factory abandoned and a German national has leased\/bought the land and is building up a hydro electric plant. His aim is to supply to the national grid or to people. The profits from the Udagama stream will fatten the pockets of investors in Germany.\u00a0 It is a good method of converting our water resource to foreign exchange that end in Germany.<\/p>\n

This is purposely done to all Third World Countries by the IMF. A well known country is Bolivia where many water projects convert Bolivian water to foreign exchange ending in the Developed Countries. Corporations own or operate water systems across the globe that bring in about $ 200 billion a year.\u201d(As Multinationals Run the taps Anger Rises over water for Profit\u201d(NYTimes<\/u>:26\/8\/2002).\u00a0 Water is now accepted as the oil \u2013 the Blue Gold of the 21 st century.<\/p>\n

It is important to note\u00a0 that the development of hydro projects and water purification plants is well known to local investors. However the tax holidays and other incentives are not made available for them.<\/p>\n

A further area where FDI come in heavily is as investment in the stock market<\/u>. Here there is no economic development involved whatsoever with the investor making a fast buck and fast repatriating the funds.<\/p>\n

It is important to note that Japan and South Korea, two economic giants\u00a0 discouraged foreign investment.(Stanley Fischer:2004)<\/p>\n

The necessity for FDI appears to rest on the inflow of foreign exchange which enables the import of luxury items.<\/p>\n

It is important to understand that foreign investment does not necessarily mean development for a country. In the manner in which foreign investment is currently done in Sri lanka, foreign investment is more an exploitation of local resources where profits pile up in the countries of the Donors.<\/p>\n

Will we ever learn the ploys and nuances of the IMF to impoverish our country.<\/p>\n

What can be done? Are we to offer Sri Lanka on a platter for Sale. It would be ideal for our President to make a firm statement that Sri Lanka is not for sale. This has to be followed up with action that will bring our country to development- i.e. there has to be a spate of development projects which will develop our resources on the one hand, create employment and incomes for local people and at the same time reduce the burden on foreign exchange by making things that we import today. This Employment Development Programme if\u00a0 done on a massive scale\u00a0 will definitely put us on the path to revive our economy.<\/p>\n

There are no erudite professors\u00a0 even from celestial bodies like Columbia\u00a0 and Harvard who can advise us.\u00a0 Even Noble laureate, Professor Jeffery Sachs when he worked in Russia, Bolivia and Poland has only provided more loans to help the Governments\u2026 His \u2018Shock Therapy\u2019 was to provide more loans that managed to halt the staggering inflation and the shortage of imported goods. However the countries became more indebted in the end\u2026.Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffery Sachs offer no definite ideas as to how countries can get on their feet. They are good critics who fail to offer an alternative path.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back tracking\u00a0 to the period before the World Bank and the IMF took over our country,\u00a0 we have a great deal of experience in handling development in a manner that created local employment, bringing incomes to the people, all in the process of making what our own people need.\u00a0 This is import substitution an area that is not approved by the IMF because it is not in the interests of the Developed Countries as their exports will suffer.<\/p>\n

Before 1977 when we started following the IMF we were self sufficient in rice<\/u>. Today we have had to import rice. This was partly done by the World Bank by restricting our extension service and partly due to mismanagement by us when we did away with the qualified field workers, leaving a vacuum where the farmers do not have any official to approach for advice.\u00a0 We were self sufficient in fabric manufacture<\/u>. We had Powerlooms worked on a cooperative basis which made all the fabric we needed. We had 96,000 handloomers who turned out elegant sarees and wearing apparel. Colombo Seven ladies then\u00a0 wore specially designed bespoke handloom sarees. Already I have seen elegant excellent handloom material at Anuradhapura, which marks a good headway.<\/p>\n

We produced Paper <\/u>from straw at Valachenai. The machinery was intended to make Paper<\/u> from Illuk grass and it was our engineers and scientists that found the art of making paper from straw. The Valachenia Paper factory was ruined by the LTTE. We also had a Paper factory at Embilipitiya which too is closed, entirely due to mismanagement. Under the Divisional Development Councils Programme(DDCP) of 1970-1977 we successfully made paper at Kotmale.\u00a0 Today one of our biggest industries is the collection of waste paper and cardboard and shipping it to India. Then, we buy paper and cardboard\u00a0 from India. The process of making paper from waste paper and waste cardboard is well known and we can easily make paper. While our farmers waste and even burn straw, many countries make paper with straw today while we the country that was a pioneer in making paper out of straw has given up and imports all our paper requirements.<\/p>\n

Take Rubber<\/u> our country produces the world\u2019s best rubber but we yet have to import\u00a0 tyres. Our Tyre Factory, a donation from Russia was privatised. According to Russian trained Chief Chemist Hector Perera, who handled the factory when it was established, the factory could have made all the tyres we needed.\u00a0 Is it not sad that we export the raw rubber and buy adhesives and rubber products made in Developed Countries.<\/p>\n

Making brass products<\/u>– door hinges and locks was once a vibrant industry at Kelaniya and Kadugannawa. It stopped with imports from China and India. In the Forties we even made good padlocks that can be compared with the best from Western manufacturers.<\/p>\n

Perfume Making<\/u>. When I visited Lucknow in India I went to Sugandhiko, a reputed perfume manufacturer and wanted to see their perfume factory. They told me that they do not have a factory, but have several portable factories which they carry to areas where there are flowers during the flowering season. We can easily have perfume making factories at Kandy to make perfumes out of flowers offered at the Dalada Maligawa. Similarly we can have small scale factories at Kelaniya and Anuradhapura, where the disposal of used flowers is a major problem. I have seen a mini distillery at work at Corris in Wales and we can easily establish a perfume industry. Many countries like France make a fortune on making perfumes. In the Cotswalds in England there is a successful industry making perfumes from lavender. In\u00a0 Lanzarotte, a perfume industry, with world wide sales\u00a0 has been successfully established based on Aloe Vera, our Komarika.\u00a0 We can successfully make perfumes. There is\u00a0 no question about it. But we have to carefully ensure quality specifications and once that is done ban the import or charge a high duty on imports.<\/p>\n

Limitations of Private for Sector Development.<\/u>\u00a0 Any nascent industry has to go through a period where production and sales are a success. This is an arduous task and the private sector is not interested in attending to such tasks as sometimes there could be a loss.\u00a0 At Matara I lost heavily when I tried to establish a brush factory, but I succeeded when I tried a Crayon industry(more of this later). This proves\u00a0 the futility of depending on the private sector to bring about\u00a0\u00a0 development as the engine of growth as dictated by the IMF.\u00a0 The Private Sector will only have a hand at getting easy things done, things where they can be certain of success like opening a supermarket. A tree takes five years to get to fruit bearing stage\u00a0 and some eight years to get to full bearing. These are long term plans of which the Private Sector is not interested. National Development\u00a0 goals can never be achieved with the private sector alone. Professor Jeffery Sachs in his book The Price of Civilization\u00a0 <\/u>\u00a0is very critical of the Free Market and the Private Sector, which he once praised and worked for. He has now realised his folly and states:<\/p>\n

Freemarkets by themselves are not able to ensure the efficiency of the economy\u2026. Free markets also needs Governments to help regulate the market\u2026 they do not guarantee\u00a0 sustainability for future generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is important to note that the infrastructure that our country had built up over decades to enable economic development to become\u00a0 a reality was abolished at the\u00a0 behest of the IMF. This was done deliberately to maim our effort at development and to move us to the scrap heap of indebtedness.<\/u><\/p>\n

.<\/u>To guide the manufacture of fabrics<\/u> we had a research institute Velona at Moratuwa, which helped the Powerlooms to make textiles of quality. The Powerloom at Hakmana, operating under my Divisional Secretary Wimalaratna made suiting that was in high demand even in England.\u00a0 The\u00a0 Small Industries Department had a separate section under a Deputy Director to import yarn which was sold to handloom entrepreneurs. These institutions\u00a0 offered expertise to handlooms, powerlooms and to small industries. I speak with sheer experience as I was once a Deputy Director of Small Industries. I had a dozen Inspectors advising small industrialists. This task has to be resumed.<\/p>\n

The Marketing Department implemented a Guaranteed Price Scheme for paddy and cereals<\/u>. The aim was to offer a premium price well over the world market price, to serve as an incentive for producers.\u00a0 The Department had a guaranteed price for eggs till we became self sufficient. There was also a\u00a0 Vegetable and Fruit Marketing Scheme<\/u>. Its aim was to ensure that producers would obtain a reasonable price for their produce\u00a0 and simultaneously to ensure that city dwellers could buy vegetables etc. at cheap rates. The\u00a0 Marketing Department too purchased vegetables and fruits at the producer fairs and paid better prices than the traders. The vegetables were brought overnight to the cities and offered for sale keeping a low margin of fifteen percent to cover up transport costs and wastage, while the Private Sector kept a margin of a hundred percent.\u00a0 This helped the city dwellers to obtain goods at a cheap rate. In this manner the Government controlled inflation. These were the main functions of the Department for Development of Agricultural Marketing, commonly known as the Marketing Department. I was once the Assistant Commissioner in charge of the vegetable and fruit purchasing scheme. The Department also had a Canning Factory<\/u> which made jam, jelley and juice out of Red Pumpkin, Ash Pumpkin, Pineapple, Tomatoes and Orange which enabled Sri lanka to become self sufficient.\u201d. At the behest of the IMF the Marketing Department with all its incentive schemes was abolished. The Canning Factory was privatised and now the Cannery is run for profit making. Earlier the Canning Factory enabled Sri lanka to be self sufficient in\u00a0 jam, juice and food preparations like Tomatoe sauce.\u00a0 It enabled the Marketing Department to offer floor prices for many produce that was required for canning and producers made good incomes. When I was working in Nuwara Eliya I purchased a car load of tomatoes at Hanguranketa, our tomatoe area and made tomatoes sauce for our six months requirements. This is an easy task.\u00a0 Instead today we import\u00a0 incurring our foreign exchange.<\/p>\n

I am certain that we can produce all the jam and fruit preparations etc within two years. This will involve establishing around ten small scale Canning Factories in various producer areas. The school curriculum should also include food preparation in areas where produce is readily available.<\/p>\n

Our school curriculum<\/u> is totally out of date. The school curriculum in all Third World countries was an extension of the school system in the Developed Countries. This system is geared to enable high achievers to enter the portals of higher education. The non high achievers too continue in school and get promoted from form to form annually, irrespective of their academic achievement(automatic promotion) and at the end of mandatory schooling they end up without any real achievement to secure a job. Unesco, the world authority for education insists on increasing the age for mandatory schooling and is less concerned about changing the school curriculum to suit a situation where the total school going age gets to school. Sri Lanka alone has to bear the ill effects of this policy because it is only Sri Lanka\u00a0 that has established schools everywhere. India, Thailand, Bangladesh do not have full coverage of schools at the secondary level and also fees are charged with the result that parents keep back the children who are not high achievers. These children\u00a0 then get involved with family\u00a0 business like household chores, cattle rearing and agriculture and eventually find an earning place in society. In Sri Lanka, on the other hand, keeping non high achievers in school\u00a0 and promoting them on an automatic basis year to year, on a free education system ends up with the school leavers not having any achievement to secure a job and in the meantime they have got weaned away from their traditional family vocations.<\/p>\n

We have the ability to make most of the small industry goods and we can thereby find employment avenues and incomes for the people. Today our Supermarkets are full of knives etc from countries as far as Brazil and Mexico. Once we had good smithys and there is a demand for knives from Kotmale Smithy today.\u00a0 .<\/p>\n

Under the Divisional Development Councils Programme(DDCP)<\/u> too many items were manufactured locally. This was done under this DDCP where\u00a0 industrial units were established to make items like Fishing Boats where youths were trained and became\u00a0 boatmakers while the boats were sold to Fishery Cooperatives to be used for ocean fishing. This offered employment to\u00a0 boatmakers and also increased our fish supply. Today we even import fish. Under the DDCP, Grants were given to cooperatives for the purchase of the machinery and stipends were given to the trainee youths till the cooperatives were a success. However we did not have a Cannery to produce food preparations. Ginger was one of our main products.\u00a0 If only we had a Cannery we could have produced ginger preserve.<\/p>\n

The lack of food manufacturing units is a drawback. We are great producers of cinnamon. Mexico buys cinnamon from us and has a roaring trade in cinnamon preparations.<\/p>\n

We have to take action to build up the lost infrastructure or establish\u00a0 similar infrastructure to help the build up of industries and agriculture.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0.<\/p>\n

Based on the above experience We can within a few months start making many small industrial goods. It is sad that we are a country that does not even make a bicycle today. Cycles and such small industrial goods have to be made locally. This is a task that can easily be done. Today the Industrial Development Board, the University of Moratuwa and other Universities successfully find the art of making new products. Some are taken up by the Private Sector but most new ideas and machinery are lost due to the lack of a State mechanism to get into production like the Coop Crayon Factory I set up at Morawaka.(More later)<\/p>\n

In this task we have to find expertise and we do have yet living with us officers who were in charge of\u00a0 making various products. Their services for a short period could easily be sought till we get over the initial formative stages. The Divisional Secretary\u00a0 Ariyadasa who supervised the Matara Boatyard, who later served as a Government Agent\u00a0 and the Development Assistant Kumarasiri, who later in life became a Secretary of a Ministry are yet among us. They hold the ability to establish\u00a0 a hundred boatyards in coastal areas and this is a task that will help making fishing boats that can increase our fishing fleet.\u00a0 The Matara Boatyard was established by me in three months. We can find work for hundreds of youths in making boats and in fishing and we can easily become self sufficient in fish within a year or two. I am certain that colleagues of mine in the Administrative Service will be able to suggest officers of high expertise.<\/p>\n

I was instrumental in establishing the Crayon Factory<\/u> at Morawaka. I wanted to establish an import substitution industry entirely on my own because the Ministry of Planning\u00a0 did not approve any of my plans to establish any import substitution type of industry. Their idea was that I should make tiles and bricks and concentrate on traditional industries. I wanted to prove that import substitution would be a success. It was a challenge to open the eyes of the Ministry.\u00a0 I had seen similar projects in the private sector (when I worked as a Deputy Director of Small Industries) and fed details known to me to my Planning Officer, Vetus Fernando,\u00a0 a raw, inexperienced, chemistry graduate.. Experiments were commenced\u00a0 at my residence and when it came to a situation where special equipment was essential, we took\u00a0\u00a0 over the Science laboratory at Rahula College after school hours. The Planning Officer and Science Teachers at Rahula\u00a0 pooled their knowledge and conducted experiments. It took around three months of daily experiments from evening six to midnight, and\u00a0 my Planning Officer\u00a0 finalised the art of making crayons of high quality. I decided that the Crayon Factory should be a cooperative project and I selected a Cooperative Union for establishing this industry. Youths were recruited and trained on the project. The Member of Parliament for Deniyaya,\u00a0 Sumanapala Dahanayake was the President of the Morawaka Cooperative Union and he took over the responsibility for production and sales. The factory was established within a few weeks working day and night and islandwide sales done.\u201d This Crayon factory produced crayons equal in quality to the famous crayola crayons and was closed down by the new Government of President Jayawardena purely because this industry was the flagship industry of the DDCP of the outgoing Sirimavo Government. Today, a full five decades later my blood boils when I see Crayola Crayons on sale in Sri lanka.<\/p>\n

A highly successful industry is coffee in Vietnam<\/u>. Vietnam can grow coffee as much as in Sri Lanka.\u00a0 Though we have the area where coffee can be ideally grown we neglected it. Kitulgala is our Coffee belt. Vietnam today produces\u00a0 quality\u00a0 coffee and exports competing with brands like Nescafe.\u00a0 This itself illustrates what can be done by Sri Lanka. While the ideal land\u00a0 lies idle and the men remain unemployed, without incomes, we import coffee. It is a ridiculous situation that can be easily corrected.<\/p>\n

The above details indicating how we can build up our economy to make what we need, and to avoid imports\u00a0 and to offer employment to our people and create incomes for them illustrates what can be done if only our leaders decide. We have a trained public service that has in the past tackled many economic development tasks. The Divisional Secretaries were in charge of running the\u00a0 Cooperative\u00a0 Powerlooms. The Assistant Directors of Small Industries handled Carpentry Training Schools and Furniture Factories as well as Ceramic Centers.<\/p>\n

My\u00a0 Planning Officer, a chemistry graduate of the University of Colombo was the kingpin that found the art of making crayons and directed the implementation at the inception.. He did not have a day\u2019s experience but applied himself carefully and intensively every evening from six to midnight for three months, till he found the art of making superb crayons.\u00a0 He trained the youths to make the crayons and also guided the industry till it got on its feet.\u00a0 Today the equal of him are in the ranks of the unemployed fighting and leading demonstrations to become employed. This in itself shows what can be done. It is upto the Government to give our youth the opportunity\u00a0 that my Planning Officer had and the country can easily come out of the economic woods.<\/p>\n

Vocational Training should be geared to create self employment. <\/u>In every country there are vocational training courses and training schools in various disciplines like agriculture, fisheries, poultry, small industry like carpentry and furniture making. We today train tens of thousands of youths in vocational training, graduate them with pomp and pageantry and left to themselves they\u00a0 remain unemployed.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The youths who score well at the academic examinations enter the portals of Universities.\u00a0 The rest feed into some sort of employment or enter vocational training and the least qualified\u00a0 drop out, lost souls who eventually become cannon fodder. We have\u00a0 forgotten the youth riots in 1971 and 1987-88 when our armed forces were compelled to rain bullets on thousands of our youths.<\/p>\n

What can be done of these drop outs of the education system is easily illustrated by the work I did accomplish as the Commonwealth Fund Advisor on Youth to the Ministry of Labour and Manpower in Bangladesh<\/u>.\u00a0\u00a0 I was confronted impromptu by the Military Government immediately after they took ovcr Bangladesh as to what contribution I can make to the economy of Bangladesh. . At that time the Ministry provided skills training to 40,000 youths a year and as usual\u00a0 skills development programmes kept off the task\u00a0 of guiding the youths that passed out. The vast majority of the trained continued to be unemployed. I suggested that as much as we provided skills we should also commence guiding youths who wished to be self employed\u00a0 to establish their own projects. Serious objections\u00a0 were raised by the Secretary to the Treasury because the ILO had tried such an experiment in the earlier three years at Tangail, and had miserably failed after a massive expenditure. My suggestion\u00a0 was approved after two hours of heated arguments . I with Bangladeshi administrators took over the task of training\u00a0 the staff in economics and motivating the youths who were being trained to establish small projects in their home areas. The training staff provided guidance in how\u00a0 the projects were to be established and guided the youths in all aspects of production and sales. This was a novel idea of guiding youths enabling them to develop their abilities and capacities in establishing their commercial projects.. The training institutes that had hitherto only trained them in skills\u00a0 were also charged with the\u00a0\u00a0 onerous task of guiding the youths when they got into production. The youths were guided in how to establish and develop their projects to create incomes. Training institutes were kept open till ten at night to enable trainee students to use the machinery.\u00a0 My task was to establish the project, train the staff to continue after my two years\u2019 consultancy ended.. Today the program guides 250,000 youths a year to establish enterprises.\u00a0 Over two million enterprises have been established by Feb 2011 and the Program has expanded apace\u201d. Today this is the premier program of employment creation the world has known and illustrates how employment creation can be successfully done. After I initially established the programme it was further developed by Bangladeshi\u00a0 Administrators\u00a0\u00a0 Auybur Rahaman,, Asafuddowlah , Permanent Secretaries of the Ministry of Youth.\u00a0 This programme becoming the premier employment creation initiative the world has known speaks out as to what can be done in development.<\/p>\n

Can we Find the Funds?<\/u><\/p>\n

When I won the day in Bangladesh and the Hon. Minister for Labour and Manpower approved my establishing a self employment programme, the Secretary to the Treasury said that he cannot provide any funds. The ILO failed and I too will fail, he said adamantly. I readily replied that I needed no new funds other than what was allocated to the Ministry, but I added that the Secretary of the Ministry should\u00a0 have the authority to retrain the staff and re deploy the funding where necessary. This was approved by the Hon Minister. The entire self employment programme, which has today become the premier employment creation programme the world has known was established without a budget, entirely out of savings from already approved training budgets.<\/p>\n

In the implementation of the Divisional Development Councils Programme in Sri Lanka, the bulk of the administration expertise\u00a0 came free as the task was shouldered by the Government Agents, the Divisional Secretaries and other\u00a0 katcheri staff.<\/p>\n

Over to our leaders.\u00a0 May these ideas based on my sheer experience,\u00a0 convince our Leaders that we do have the ability and the expertise\u00a0 to attend to develop our economy in a manner that will create employment and provide incomes\u00a0 for our people while also reducing our import\u00a0 burden. We need not sell our family silver to survive. This is something we successfully did in the past.\u00a0\u00a0 In today\u2019s context import substitution and the development of local resources is the key to development- to create employment and incomes for our people. There is absolutely no other way ahead<\/u>.<\/p>\n

This is a task that we once did and therefore can easily do again.<\/p>\n

Let me hope to see the day when our leaders will have the ability and the nerve to approve an Employment Creation\u00a0 Programme. I can guarantee that it will be a great success and being the author who successfully designed and implemented the Youth Self Employment Programme of Bangladesh, the premier employment creation programme the world has known, my words deserve credence.<\/p>\n

Garvin Karunaratne, Ph.D. Michigan State University<\/p>\n

Former Government Agent, Matara 1971-1973<\/p>\n

6 th July2017<\/p>\n

Sources<\/u><\/p>\n

All quotes where the source is not indicated are from my book, How the IMF Sabotaged Third World Development <\/u>(Kindle)(https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/How-Sabotaged-Third-World-Development-ebook\/dp\/BO1MG9EF4Y<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Dr Stanley A Fischer: Development Strategy for East Asian Countries: A Korean Perspective<\/u>: Paper presented<\/u> at the Annual Meeting of Asian Development Bank, Cheju, Korea, 15May 2004)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Garvin Karunratne, Ph.D. Michigan State University The Sri Lankan economy is truly in the doldrums. The BBC has recently in a spate of news broadcasts, derogatorily questioned: Is Sri Lanka Up for Sale.\u201d(28\/5\/2017). This was preceded on 26 th June 2017, by another news item, A Country Trapped in Debt\u201d. Their\u00a0 Is Sri Lanka […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-garvin-karunaratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67602","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=67602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}