Tag: economy

July 21, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka should watch inflation, the budget gap and fix energy enterprise to the economy stable in the future the International Monetary Fund has said ending a three-year bailout program. The IMF released a final 415 million US dollar tranche under a 2.5 billion US dollar bailout package, a somewhat […]

July 19, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s recent spike in inflation following a steep depreciation of the currency is mostly a structural change in prices, and not continuous monetary inflation, an International Monetary Fund official said. As foreign reserves are sold down by the Central Bank, the trade gap widens and the current account deficit […]

July 19, 2012 (LBO) – Entrepreneurship awards by a Sri Lankan business chamber will include two new categories this year to recognise women running small enterprises in the former war zone and disabled entrepreneurs. Sri Lanka’s 30-year ethnic war which ended in 2009 left thousands of people disabled on both sides of the conflict and […]

July 17, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka is pushing for stronger economic ties with the United States which will strengthen overall diplomatic relations between the two countries, a top diplomat said. “At this point we have a very straightforward and genuine relationship with the US,” Sri Lanka’s envoy to the United States, Jaliya Wickremasuriya said. […]

July 14, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka has cut excessively high taxes on several imported foods improving the food freedoms of the poorest sections of the population and has also allowed cooking gas prices to fall. Sri Lanka was pushed into a balance of payments crisis in 2011 by credit taken to manipulate oil prices […]

July 11, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka is holding its key interest rates at which money is injected into the economy at 9.75 percent amid rising inflation, though credit and money supply growth is starting to slow, the Central Bank said. In February energy prices were raised, the exchange partially floated to reduce the need […]

July 07, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka has lost money by buying Greece government bonds for its foreign reserve portfolio but returns on other assets have offset the losses, the Central Bank said. Sri Lanka has a de facto peg with the US dollar and aggressive investment strategies involving diversifying out of dollar assets can […]

July 05, 2012 (LBO) – Two sugar mills expropriated by the state last year has begun to burden ordinary citizens with the finance ministry channeling 557 million rupees from taxes extracted from the people to the firms. A mid-year fiscal report to parliament revealed that 550 million rupees had been given to cover day to […]

July 04, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka has spent 70 billion rupees on highways, power, water and sanitation in the first five months of the year, with 50 billion rupees going to roads, a finance ministry report said. The finance ministry in a mid-year fiscal report said 36.8 billion rupees was spent on national roads, […]

July 04, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s state investment promotion agency said it had inked a deal with a Singapore led consortium to build a 3 billion US dollar tourism city in Katana, north of the capital Colombo. Earlier reports had said that Sun City, a South Africa based firm will build an 800 million […]

July 02, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s budget deficit has doubled in the first four months of 2012, with current spending growing at twice the rate of tax revenues and leading to unprecedented reliance on bank financing, official data show. Total revenues grew 7.2 percent to 305.5 billion rupees up to April 2012 from a […]

July 02, 2012 (LBO) – India has committed 740. 8 million US dollars out of 1,015 million US dollars of foreign financing to Sri Lanka in the first four months of 2012, including 275. 1 million US dollars as an outright grant, official data shows. The massive grant, which is unusual in Sri Lanka’s recent […]