Sri Lanka needs fiscal discipline and bipartisan consensus on economic policy

Sri Lanka needs fiscal discipline and bipartisan consensus on economic policy to replicate the success of other fast growing economies, a top private sector professional said.











Sri Lanka needs fiscal discipline and bipartisan consensus on economic policy to replicate the success of other fast growing economies, a top private sector professional said. Drawing parallels with the celebrated economic turnaround of the Irish Republic, Deva Rodrigo, Head of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and Senior Partner of PriceWaterhouseCoopers said the country needs to ‘enforce unpopular and perhaps initially painful fiscal discipline to make Sri Lanka a prosperous nation.’

Rodrigo was addressing senior corporate executives at the LBR-LBO CEO Forum on Wednesday, on the lessons Sri Lanka could learn from the Irish Republic. He is also a member of Sri Lanka Monetary Board, which has come under fire from some analysts for promoting monetary expansion and inflation in the country by maintaining negative real interest rates.

Rodrigo said the Monetary Board’s position was explained in its recent statement and he could expand on it individually as Board decisions are made collectively and all me