Category: Watch Tower
Jaffna to New York’s Wall Street and back to Jaffna
By Jekhan Aruliah Back in the day Raj Janan’s father was a successful industrialist in Jaffna, owning at various times an aluminium factory, a knitwear factory, a private hospital and a newspaper. Janan’s childhood was disrupted by the JVP insurrection in 1971 when he was 11 years old.One consequence of which was the family was […]
Opinion: Revolution 4.0 – An intriguing case of the man and machine
By Taamara de Silva “The changes are so profound that, from the perspective of human history, there has never been a time of greater promise or potential peril.” – Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum We sway on the cusp of a technological revolution that will forever reconstruct the very fabric […]
Dr. Ravi Perumalpillai, Oxford Surgeon who became a Jaffna Farmer
By Jekhan Aruliah I write this piece as my appreciation of a Diasporan who came back to Jaffna and made a difference, sowing economic and medical seeds in the North. A friend who passed away in Colombo on 9th December 2018, and whose ashes were scattered in Jaffna four days later. I first met Ravi […]
Entrepreneurs in Jaffna? Take a look in Ammachi!
By Jekhan Aruliah Soon after I moved to Jaffna in 2015 I heard rumours of this fantastic food court run by war widows. Friends driving North from Colombo said they found it somewhere on the A9 near Killinochchi in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province. It was a year before I actually got round to visiting the […]
Opinion: Sri Lankan rupee under pressure – How not to crack
By Economic Intelligence Unit of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce The Sri Lankan currency (LKR) has weakened against the US dollar in 2018 (9.4% as at 26 September 2018) with close to 4% of the depreciation being recorded in the last two weeks.Currencies like the Indian rupee, Indonesian rupiah and Philippines peso have also seen steep […]
OPINION: 90,000 Northern families in shanties or homeless. What happened to Govt. promised housing?
By Jekhan Aruliah In October last year I had the privilege of participating in the blessing of a new water well in the Killinochchi District of the Northern Province. Its construction had been funded by the UK based charity Child Aid Lanka. The family on whose land the well is built, together with neighbours who […]
Opinion: A response to article “Pulling back the curtain on privatization of plantation sector”
By Devaka Wickramasuriya I have read with much interest the recent article where Dr. Romesh Bandaranaike has shared his “unique perspective” of Sri Lanka’s plantations. At the outset, I totally disagree with Dr. Bandaranaike’s contention that privatization was necessary as the plantations were the biggest source of political patronage in the country. While some political interference […]
OPINION: The Sri Lankan tourist industry’s ignorance of the North starts at the top
By Jekhan Aruliah I must first congratulate the Sri Lanka Tourist Development Authority (SLTDA) before I criticise it. Just a few days after the publication of my article in June 2018 complaining their “Sri Lanka Tourist Attractions” map showed nothing in the Northern Province other than Jaffna’s airport, the SLTDA replaced that barren old map. […]
Opinion: SOAR’ing through the Cloud in Sri Lanka
By Chandita Samaranayake, Head of Application at Oracle – Sri Lanka, Indochina, and the Maldives The cloud, since its inception, has expanded and evolved into one of the biggest paradigm shifts in the computer age. It is changing how businesses run and people work, it is creating new categories and disrupting existing categories, and it is […]
Opinion: Northern Province Tourism? Is there more in the North than just Jaffna’s airport?
By Jekhan Aruliah According to the Sri Lanka Tourist Development Authority’s (SLTDA) map of “Tourist Attractions” at the time of writing this post, the only attraction in the Northern Province is the airport in Jaffna. I suppose we should be grateful the map at least has the airport. The SLTDA map shows the rest of the […]
Opinion: Importance of Financial Reporting for Transparency
By Nishan Fernando Corporate Reporting Bushman, Piotroski and Smith (2003) identified that the availability of information was considered to be a key determinant of the efficiency of resource allocation decisions and growth in an economy. Availability of information is linked to corporate transparency, defined as the widespread availability of firm-specific information to those stakeholders outside […]
Opinion: How China is turning bad loans into strategic investments
China’s Debtbook Diplomacy: How China is Turning Bad Loans into Strategic Investments Belt and Road is not the Marshall Plan: it’s comprised of loans, not grants, and China expects a return for its money By Sam Parker and Gabrielle Chefitz Through its Belt and Road Initiative, China is extending hundreds of billions of dollars in […]