Tag: Finance

May 12, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s state investment promotion agency is processing almost 500 million dollars of new deals mainly into leisure and is planning two investments zones in the former war-torn north of the island, officials said. Kulasekara said the end of the war had opened up two-thirds of the country’s beach areas […]

BRUSSELS, May 10, 2010 (AFP) – Europe and the IMF gave a major boost to world markets Monday with a trillion-dollar war chest to ease fears of a new recession, but governments faced pressure to clean up their fiscal houses. Some 440 billion euros would come from eurozone nations and 60 billion euros from the […]

May 10, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s main pension fund of private citizens earned a large real return as the Central Bank brought inflation down in 2009, though the national debt expanded as the state could not inflate away debt and impoverish pensioners. In the 2009 annual report the Central Bank said the government should […]

May 10, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s exports grew 20 percent 629 million US dollars in February 2010 on the back of booming agricultural commodities while apparel, the country’s main industrial export, contracted 9.7 percent to 248.6, official data showed. The Central Bank said apparel exports however had improved from January. Earnings from tea grew […]

RIGA, May 9, 2010 (AFP) – Seen from the eastern rim of the European Union, the looming austerity drive in crisis-afflicted Greece reads like old news. For almost two years, the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have brought in repeated draconian anti-crisis measures, slashing public spending and hiking taxes to try to dig […]

May 09, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s president Mahinda Rajapaksa who crushed a 30-year separatist war in the island and won landslide election last month will use his extensive executive powers to fix the economy, a powerful minister said. “The president used his executive powers in the last three years to finish the war,” Basil […]

May 08, 2010 (LBO) – A fiscal and monetary prudence program backed by the International Monetary Fund and donor loans will partly shield Sri Lanka from the fallout of a European credit confidence crisis, a rating agency has said. Sri Lanka hit a balance of payments crisis in late 2008 and some foreign lenders refused […]

May 05, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s expanding state has created more jobs in recent years but costs are mounting with 57. 6 cents out of every tax rupee being taken home by workers as salaries and pensions last year, official data shows. In 2009 Sri Lanka had increased state workers by a net 61,856, […]

May 05, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka Treasury bill yields eased at Wednesday’s auction despite the government raising an additional billion rupees than the maturing stock, the government’s debt office said. The 3-month yield fell 16 basis points to 8.24 percent with only a billion rupees of bill being sold and the 6-month yield fell […]

May 05, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lankan president and finance minister Mahinda Rajapaksa has appointed Sarath Amunugama, a former cabinet minister, as deputy minister of finance and planning, the president’s office said in a statement. Amunugama was among four cabinet ministers and six deputy ministers sworn in Wednesday following parliamentary polls in April won by […]

May 04, 2010 (LBO) – The International Monetary Fund is looking for an economically sound budget for Sri Lanka this year with tax reforms to cut the deficit as it starts discussions to resume a deal with the island, an official said. Sri Lanka’s government got parliamentary approval to spend money until April amid two […]

May 02, 2010 (LBO) – Top Sri Lankan economists and a poll by an influential newspaper has backed the revival of a stalled International Monetary Fund deal to discipline government spending and preserve economic stability. A poll by Sri Lanka’s by the Business Times, a part of Sri Lanka’s The Sunday Times an influential English, […]