Tag: economy

July 11, 2008 (LBO) – The Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) to be signed between India and Sri Lanka in August will allow professionals to work in either country but with safeguards to meet local concerns, economists said.The CEPA deal will make it easier for Sri Lankan companies to invest in India in areas like […]

July 11, 2008 (LBO) – A top Sri Lankan businessman whose companies have invested overseas says the government should relax exchange controls to make it easier for local firms to invest abroad, especially India with which trade deals are being struck.“We need a system where the central bank gives us freedom to invest in India […]

July 11, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s finance ministry had to rely on bank overdrafts and additional domestic borrowing to bridge cash gaps in the first five months of 2008 as revenues were below target, a government report said. The finance ministry said the cash deficit forecast for its operations by the end of May […]

July 10, 2008 (LBO) – A one day token strike called by Sri Lanka’s opposition parties got off to a peaceful start with slightly reduced traffic in the capital Colombo and most public services operating as usual, officials and residents said.Sri Lanka’s state-run railways system’s chief Lalithasiri Gunaruwan said train services were operating normally but […]

July 10, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s post minister, one of a coterie of 108 ministers in the island, said he had personally got the postal service moving during a one-day token strike, while the head of an over-staffed state enterprise wished for strikes every day. There has been no general strike in the island […]

July 10, 2008 (LBO) – The dominance of Sri Lanka’s Western province which housed the capital Colombo, in the country’s economic activity has fallen below 50 percent in 2007, the island’s central bank said.Using gross domestic product (GDP) data compiled by the government’s statistics office, Sri Lanka’s central bank said the share of Western province […]

July 9, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s privately-run bus operators said they would keep their buses on the road on July 10, ignoring the token strike call of a Marxist-Nationalist former ally of the ruling coalition. The Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) which popularized policies of wholesale government recruitment, indiscriminate subsidies and increased state intervention […]

July 07, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s main opposition United National Party (UNP) is backing calls for new salary hikes for the island’s already bloated state sector, continuing a tradition that has created a class of super citizens and high inflation in the country.The UNP and its trade union arm, the Jathika Sevaka Sangamaya (JSS), […]

July 06, 2008 (LBO) – One of the three top nature reserves in Sri Lanka, a biodiversity hotspot, is being threatened by encroachment and commercial cultivation involving corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and business, a new report says.“Once title is given, the land soon passes to the politically powerful or their cronies,” says Environmental Foundation Ltd., which […]

July 05, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s central bank which has debauched the rupee since its creation in 1950, has made a strong case for a stable national currency, but a top industrialist warned that high inflation was making the policy backfire on industry. Sri Lanka lost exchange rate stability shortly after 1950, when a […]

July 3, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Hayleys group has joined top global firms to lobby the eight leading industrial nations to make water availability a priority at an upcoming meeting in Japan next week, the company said. Hayleys is one of 19 companies that have signed the CEO Water Mandate, an initiative of the […]

July 03, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s private sector has called on the government to implement politically difficult reforms and austerity measures to put the economy on a better footing. Anura Ekanayake, deputy vice chairman of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, said the government should do reforms to correct the wrong policies that hinder growth […]