Tag: Finance

August 15, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s forex markets are defying fundamental economic principles with bids creeping above offer prices in what analysts see as the latest in a series of perversions that have hit financial markets in the country. Sri Lank is now floating a 500 million dollar international sovereign bond to ease pressure […]

August 14, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s central bank sought to calm the country’s forex markets in its August monetary policy statement as the rupee came under increasing pressure and inflation spiked up. The rupee hit a life low Monday moving down to 112.00 to the dollar, despite intervention from official quarters. The central bank […]

August 14, 2007 (LBO) – A Sri Lankan business delegation is to visit the Middle East next month seeking to penetrate the markets in three oil exporting countries whose economies are booming because of high petroleum prices. The visit, organised by the trade fair unit of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC), will cover Saudi […]

FRANKFURT, Aug 14, 2007 (AFP) – By injecting billions into the money markets in the wake of fears about the US housing market, central banks are reaping what they have sown after years of low interest rates, analysts said Tuesday.IKB’s main shareholder, the German state-owned KfW bank, came to the rescue by providing an 8.1-billion-euro […]

August 13, 2007 (LBO) – A senior Sri Lankan economist has called for a higher allocation of resources for less developed regions of the island and special perks like higher pay for teachers serving those areas. Nimal Sanderatne, former senior visiting fellow at the Post Graduate Institute of Agriculture of the Peradeniya University, said one […]

August 13, 2007 (LBO) – The Maldives has shrugged off a red flag from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that its currency peg with the US dollar was under threat from a record budget deficit and money printing. Sri Lanka’s external reserves have also been under pressure in recent months and the country is going […]

August 13, 2007 (LBO) – Despite perceptions of a lack of a ‘feel good’ factor steady gains are being made in living standards, Sri Lanka’s central bank governor Nivard Cabraal said. “Since there are perceptions and claims that people do not feel economic development. Let me also trace a few indications,” Cabraal told the members […]

August 13, 2007 (LBO) – If market reforms and globalization that brought prosperity to Sri Lanka’s Western Province could be replicated countrywide, extreme poverty could be eliminated in a generation, a development economist said. Many economists had pointed out that Sri Lanka is held back by policy errors, despite being rich in human, natural resources […]

August 13, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lankans need to change attitudes that are holding the country back despite it being reasonably well endowed with human and natural resources, a top economic analyst has said. Anila Dias Bandaranaike, a former director of statistics at Central Bank who had gained widespread respect for her independent analysis of […]

August 12, 2007 (LBO) – If market reforms and globalization that brought prosperity to Sri Lanka’s Western Province could be replicated countrywide, extreme poverty could be eliminated in a generation, a development economist said. Many economists had pointed out that Sri Lanka is held back by policy errors, despite being rich in human, natural resources […]

August 11, 2007 (LBO) – Public sector corruption in Sri Lanka is a key factor driving poverty and the country is losing two percentage points of economic growth a year from resources lost to sleaze, a senior economist said. He said another key cause of poverty was inflation, which affected the poor most because their […]

August 09, 2007 (LBO) – Though Sri Lanka had “substantial” foreign debt, the country would be able to maintain external liquidity even after an upcoming bond issue, Standard & Poor’s Rating Services (S&P) has said. “The interest burden of the debt was nearly 30 percent of general government revenue, while debt-to-revenue ratio, at an estimated […]