Tag: economy

Feb 22, 2007 (AFP) – Sri Lanka said Thursday it plans to rejig its consumer price index basket to reflect changed food and lifestyle trends as inflation based on a decades-old range of items crossed 20 percent in January.The Colombo Consumer Price Index has attracted widespread criticism because it is based on a formula better […]

Feb 21, 2007 (AFP) – War in the Middle East and equal paying jobs at home led to a sharp drop in Sri Lankans working abroad in 2006 as maids, clerks and professionals opted to stay put, an official said Wednesday.To make it more attractive, the government now planned to raise the minimum wage to […]

Feb 19 (LBO) – For the first time in a decade, Sri Lanka’s exports to India dropped last year, following trade disputes over the island’s duty free access into India for vegetable oil, spices and copper. Sri Lanka and India have duty free or preferential access into each other’s markets for over 4000 goods, under […]

Feb 18 (LBO) – Millions of pounds worth debt-relief to Sri Lanka is hanging in the balance with Britain saying that queries have been raised over human rights, rising defence spending and ongoing hostilities. The British move comes within months of Germany halting new aid to the country. In 2005, Britain has agreed to pay […]

February 12 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s exports growth slowed to 8.4 percent in 2006 from 10.2 percent, while imports grew by 15.7 percent, widening the trade balance by a third to 3.3 billion US dollars, the Central Bank said Tuesday. Private remittances grew by 21 per cent to 2,326 million US dollars containing the current […]

Feb 13, 2007 (AFP) – High taxes and rigid labour laws are weighing on business confidence in troubled Sri Lanka, which is one of the worst places to do business in South Asia, a new World Bank study says. An upsurge in violence over the past year alone has killed more than 4,000 people, leaving […]

February 08 (LBO) – Economic reforms has slashed poverty in Sri Lanka’s western province while backward policies that kept agriculture stagnant in rural areas were trapping people in poverty, researchers have found. Poverty in the western province fell from 19 to 11 percent between 1991 and 2002, with the region growing at twice or three […]

MANILA, Feb 6, 2007 (AFP) – The Philippines posted an inflation rat of 3.9 percent in January, the slowest pace of price increases in 39 months, the government said Tuesday.Inflation stood at 3.6 percent in October 2003. The January figure was at the low end of the central bank’s projected range of between 3.9 and […]

Jan 30, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s tax office is moving towards increasing the number of taxpayers to five percent of the total population, a top official said. At present, only about two percent of the population in Sri Lanka are income tax payers, Commissioner General of Inland Revenue said at a workshop organized by […]

February 02 (LBO) –Sri Lanka should have a higher target for foreign exchange reserves in 2007 the World Bank said, days before its Bretton Woods twin, the International Monetary Fund closed its office in Sri Lanka. Analysts say the tight monetary policy that started in December is helping the rupee, as is the current petroleum […]

January 31 (LBO) – Consumer inflation in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo soared to a new record of 20.5 percent in the year to January, beating the 19.8 percent high reached in November, a report from the government’s statistics office showed Wednesday. This is the highest inflation seen in Sri Lanka for more than a decade. […]

MUMBAI, Jan 31, 2007 (AFP) – The Reserve Bank of India on Wednesday raised its key short-term borrowing rate by a quarter percentage point to 7.50 percent citing inflation risks as it also hiked its full-year growth forecast. The central bank however kept other rates unchanged including its overnight deposit rate at 6.0 percent after […]