{"id":91521,"date":"2019-07-18T15:23:27","date_gmt":"2019-07-18T22:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=91521"},"modified":"2019-07-18T15:23:27","modified_gmt":"2019-07-18T22:23:27","slug":"millennium-challenges-economic-issues-and-international-politics-in-sr-lanka-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/07\/18\/millennium-challenges-economic-issues-and-international-politics-in-sr-lanka-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"MILLENNIUM CHALLENGES, ECONOMIC ISSUES AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICS IN SR LANKA PART 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Fiscal Policy <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fiscal policy\nbecame a vital issue after the conditions created Korean War in early 1950s and\nSri Lanka was unable to design and develop a good fiscal policy to the\ncountry.  It seemed that the economic\nauthority treated fiscal policy and monetary as alternatives despites in our\nuniversity classrooms education in which we were educated that fiscal and\nmonetary policies are not alternatives but complimentary to fix weakness in one\nby others.  Fiscal policy has been continued\nwithout a proper solution and all governments ruled in the country used\nborrowing as the way to cover budget deficit and it was inflationary and\npushing the country to a debt trap. After 1995, many countries used different\ntechniques to solve fiscal problems but Sri Lanka hasn\u2019t opened a creative\ndebate on this matter and stuck in a mud puddle.  Still Sri Lanka has good solutions to fiscal\nissues, however, politics in the country doesn\u2019t allow to use right\npolicies.  During the last several years\nof the Rajapaksa regime, there was a systematic strategy to gradually solve the\nproblem and the yahapalanaya disturbed the strategies and fiscal policy\nentirely forced to house of yahapalana rouge and complicated the fiscal\npolicy.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Land Rights<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is highly\ncomplicated issue involved in legal, politics, ethnic and religious\nissues.  Land right is essential for\nbusiness investments and how to decide the allowing land right for various\nbusiness purposes and how to decide the value of lands for business purposes.  Sri Lanka has intense competition to gain\nland rights for business purposes and there are legal barriers for foreigners\ngain and access and local people to sell lands to foreigners for business\npurposes. The government has submitted the State Land (Special Provisions) Bill\nto the Parliament on 28.06.2019 and Mr Neville Ladduwahetty expressed legal\nopinion on that bill that it affects the sovereignty of people and with\napproval by people at a referendum it cannot be passed (Island: 17.07.2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue in\nrelation to land rights need to be discussed in an open forum like making new\nconstitution at least 2 to 3 years with the participation of all sort of people\nin the country and it should not be a decision like Don Juwan Dharmapala style\ndecision in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Access to Credit<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Access to credit\nalso a complicated issue and many people in the country has no clear idea about\nit without practically association with problems. As I had been involved in\ncredit management and credit policy making in a government bank and doing\npractical research on this area, I understand practical, theoretical, policy\nissues as well as corruption issues about access to credits in Sri Lanka.  There are fundamental issues such as capital\nshortage of bank and financial system of the country and to solve this problem,\npolitics in the country has become an impediment and this issue needs to be\nopenly talked by relevant people and politicians. There are effective solutions\nto the problem but bureaucrats involved in credit management have no idea how\nto solve the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Credit\nadministration also a complicated problem in the country as it is involved in\ngigantic corruption of credit administrations of banks and non-bank financial\nintermediaries and politician\u2019s involvement with it. I have seen that credit\nadministration blames to politicians in many occasions they made decision\nbecause politicians influenced to them but it not truth. Credit administration\nmade decision as a part of corrupt practices and they attempt blame politicians\nwhen the credit decision goes bad.  In\nthis situation, credit administration must be able to educate credit policy and\nprocedures to politicians and prevent bad credit decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other\nimportant thing is that Sri Lanka must allow good market player with strong\ncapital base to play with strong controls. \nMost probably Chinese banks can play a better role to increase access to\ncredits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

International Politics in Sri Lanka<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka has\nbeen involved in international politics since 1990s and it appears that the\ncountry has difficulties to manage international politics with one voice of\npolitical parties.  In Western countries\nand many other Asian, African and Latin American countries have one voice on\ninternational relations but in Sri Lanka, policy on international relations is\nnot clear and especially political parties have no clear ideas on what to do in\nthis arena.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why do we go\nalong with a policy view of an international bloc need clearly understand\nconsidering the possible benefits to the country?  Many politicians have no knowledge,\nexperience and skills to assess.  In this\nsituation, many politicians can be brought by international powers with a small\nsum of money or benefits.  Recently I\nwatched a TV program in Sri Lanka, which was a talk show with a lawyer.  I had difficulty to judge whether the layer\nis knowledgeable, skilful or experience person as he was talking bullshit to\nmislead people of Sri Lanka without knowing international politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a feeling\nthat the person was a bait of international politics to mislead Sri Lankans.\nHowever, he was highly unsuccessful as he could not present the idea people to\nbelieve or accept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

International\npolitics change quickly and friends become enemies and enemies become\nfriends.  This is the dynamism and if\nthis dynamism understands by political parties and come to uniform policies it\ncan easily handle international politics. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS Fiscal Policy Fiscal policy became a vital issue after the conditions created Korean War in early 1950s and Sri Lanka was unable to design and develop a good fiscal policy to the country.  It seemed that the economic authority treated fiscal policy and monetary as alternatives despites in our university classrooms education […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edward-theophilus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91521","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=91521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}