Category: Economy

April 03, 2009 (LBO) – The Sri Lankan government is ready to be flexible on export earnings criteria in a support package for exporters to help them weather the economic recession, a senior finance ministry official said.S R Attygalle, director-general of fiscal policy of the finance ministry, said the government is ready to be flexible […]

April 02, 2009 (LBO) – The migration of skilled professionals remains a major concern for Sri Lanka’s corporate sector, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said.Hasitha Wickremasinghe, an economist for the ADB in Sri Lanka, said a recent survey of the corporate sector by the bank had revealed brain drain was continuing unabated. The problem was […]

Mar 31, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s economic growth will slow down this year but could revive the next helped by reconstruction activity expected with the end of the war against Tamil Tigers, the Asian Development Bank said.The ADB report said the island economy remained resilient last year, bolstered by strong growth in the agriculture […]

Mar 31, 2009 (LBO) – Consumer price inflation in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo dropped to 5.3 percent in the 12-months to March 2009 from 7.6 percent in February, with prices dropping for six straight months, the government’s statistics office said. Consumer prices have dropped absolutely from October 2008, when the revised Colombo Consumer Price Index […]

Mar 31, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka should adopt a more flexible exchange rate policy and depreciate the rupee to make exports more competitive and better manage import demand, the Asian Development Bank said.ADB Lead Economist for Sri Lanka Narhari Rao said two issues of concern are the fiscal deficit and the external account in […]

Mar 30, 2009 (LBO) – The Sri Lanka rupee closed at 115.20/45 against the greenback, with the country’s reserves running low as talks with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout package, stretched to a second week. The Sri Lanka rupee broke the Central Bank’s defended peg level of 114.25 last Thursday. The IMF team […]

Mar 27, 2009 (LBO) – An International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission in Sri Lanka is talking with the government on a stand-by arrangement and but the volume of financing the island requires is yet to be decided, an official said. “We don’t have any date as to the conclusion of those discussions or their likely […]

March 25, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lankan state enterprises come begging to the Treasury for money to pay staff salaries, instead of making profits and contributing to national development, a senior government minister said.“One of the strange functions as the minister of finance in Sri Lanka is to handout checks at the end of the […]

Mar 24, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s minister of consumer affairs has admitted being fooled by crafty bakers who sell underweight bread and exploit consumers. Consumer affairs minister Bandula Gunawardena called on bakers to stick to a certain standard when making bread. According to an investigation carried out by the consumer affairs authority most of […]

Mar 22, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s current balance of payments troubles are mostly home brewed and an expected return to an International Money Fund bailout is simply a new cycle in a long history of economic mismanagement, economists said.“This is a home brewed macro economic crisis,” Razeen Sally from the London School of Economics, […]

Mar 21, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s central bank has asked banks to lend to the private sector amidst a peg defence exercise that has created a liquidity crunch, heavy state borrowing and banks that are wary of rising bad loans. The central bank said it had cut its de facto main policy signal rate, […]

March 19, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka is putting on a brave face after being forced into an International Monetary Fund bailout having spent its way into trouble and busted up billions of dollars of foreign reserves on an ill-fated peg defence exercise.“This is a special measure taken by the IMF to help countries cope […]