Category: Economy

Sept 26, 2009 (LBO) – The virtues of a currency board system were hotly debated at an annual confab of top economists in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo, as the island emerged from its latest balance of payments crisis caused by an unstable peg. Sri Lanka was exposed to balance of payments crises after 1950 when […]

Sept 25, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s overvalued currency is hurting exports and a catch up in productivity inevitably points to more industrial job losses, private sector representatives have said.His comments came as an official survey by the government’s statistics office said 155,000 industrial jobs have been lost in the second quarter of 2009 from […]

Sept 24, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka is expected to spend around 0.75 percent on reconstructing war-torn areas in the north and east in 2010, and it would be outside the program target agreed with the International Monetary Fund, an official said. A 20-month program agreed with the IMF in July 2008, set a target […]

Sept 23, 2009 (LBO) – Detailed International Monetary Fund documents showing the underlying basis for a stand-by loan to Sri Lanka have not been released by a decision of the island’s government, an official said.A storm has brewing in Sri Lanka over the suppression of IMF documents. Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, from the Point Pedro Institute of […]

Sept 22, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s parliament lacked a permanent fiscal affairs committee paving the way for “mythical” budgets and lawmakers lacked capacity and research to constructively probe public spending and bodies, a legal activist has said. “Take, for example, the parliamentary oversight committee, COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises) tasked with dealing with all […]

Sept 22, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s economic revival is better than originally expected when the International Monetary Fund approved a stand by loan, and tax revenues are improving, a review mission said in Colombo. The IMF was originally expecting 3.0 percent growth for the island for 2009 but has revised it up to 3.5 […]

Sept 21 2009 (LBO) – Will Sri Lanka’s latest balance of payments crisis, triggered by an unstable peg be a lesson for the future, or was it a gamble which was barely won but is doomed to be repeated again, economists at a conference in Colombo asked.Sri Lanka tried to defend a dollar peg when […]

Sept 20, 200 (LBO) – Women workers would be hardest hit if the European Union withdraws duty free market access to Sri Lankan exports, given to countries that meet a governance and a rights threshold set by the trade bloc.The potential loss of the GSP Plus duty concession could lead to job losses if Sri […]

Sept 19, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka was ready to change intermediate targets or vary its policy tools dynamically to keep inflation low, a senior central banker said, though the final inflation target is as yet somewhat loosely defined.Sri Lanka’s central bank has a loosely defined inflation target of “single digit”.In 2007 and 2008 Sri […]

Sept 18, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka exports fell 18.9 percent in the 7-months to July while imports fell 35.3 percent as a trade contraction continued, while the trade deficit narrowed 6.5 percent to 1,883 million US dollars. In July exports fell 23.1 percent to 652.2 million compared with exceptionally high growth recorded last year, […]

Sept 17, 2009 (LBO) – The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said it is giving Sri Lanka a 70 million dollar road rehabilitation loan to support its drive to revitalize two provinces in the north and east. The loan, from ADB’s concessional Asian Development Fund, will fund the upgrade of 370 kilometres of roads and rebuild […]

Sept 16, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka has expanded an already bloated state sector by 305,060 persons since 2004, including 43,981 in 2009, data released by the island’s finance ministry showed.Deputy finance minister Ranjith Siyambalapitiya said the government was continuing to give state jobs and 1,000 people would be absorbed to state-run Bank of Ceylon […]