{"id":78052,"date":"2018-06-04T15:10:48","date_gmt":"2018-06-04T22:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=78052"},"modified":"2018-06-04T15:10:48","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T22:10:48","slug":"rajapaksa-promises-20-tax-cut-if","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/06\/04\/rajapaksa-promises-20-tax-cut-if\/","title":{"rendered":"Rajapaksa promises 20% tax cut if &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><span class=\"article_date\">By Norman Palihawadana\u00a0Courtesy The Island<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span class=\"article_date\">June 5, 2018, 12:16 pm<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday said a new government, under his leadership, would lower taxes by 20%.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;People are suffering due to extremely high taxes. They can\u2019t even eat properly or save any money because of the staggering taxes. When we form a government we will reduce taxes by 20%.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Rajapaksa also condemned the decision taken by the government to privatise the railway system in the Hambantota District.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.island.lk\/modules\/modPublication\/article_title_images\/1857728566mr.jpg\" alt=\"article_image\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The Cabinet last week approved a proposal to call for an international tender to build a 100 km railway line linking Beliatte to Hambantota, Kataragama and the Mattala airport on a Build-Operate and Transfer (BOT) basis. The estimated project cost is USD 800 million (Rs. 127 billion). The successful bidder will also be able to set up restaurants, cargo storage facilities and shopping complexes in the areas coming under its purview.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is the first step in privatizing the railway department. There is no need for us to privatize the railways because we have a long tradition of government run railways. This is what happens under UNP administrations,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Rajapaksa added that the government had started selling state assets as soon as it came to power and it was a further reflection of the anti-national disastrous economic policies of the regime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Norman Palihawadana\u00a0Courtesy The Island June 5, 2018, 12:16 pm Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday said a new government, under his leadership, would lower taxes by 20%. &#8220;People are suffering due to extremely high taxes. They can\u2019t even eat properly or save any money because of the staggering taxes. When we form a government we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78052","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=78052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}