Cheap for foreigners,costly for locals
View(s):Depends on who you ask, Colombo is talking about a report this week in which the Sri Lankan capital is described as the 10 least expensive or cheapest cities in the world.
According to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) worldwide cost of living index survey, Mumbai and Karachi were the joint cheapest locations followed by New Delhi, Kathmandu and Algiers.
The others in the top 10 order were Bucharest, Colombo, Panama City, Jeddah and Tehran.
The report says that this assessment is ‘by Western standards” which may then measure up because no one in Colombo, let alone the outstations, will concur with such a report.
In fact a survey cum poll undertaken by the Business Times together with its polling partner, the Ravi Bamunusinghe-led Research Consultancy Bureau (RCB) in the past two weeks found the cost of living (COL) and general prices shooting through the sky and on a one-way street; up, up and up, whatever government indicators, the Central Bank or the Census and Statistics Department may indicate.
The results of this revealing island-wide poll will be released next week.
So if by western standards, Colombo is measured as a least expensive destination (for travelers), it’s a case of “cheap for foreigners; costly for locals.”
Everything is at astronomical costs in the capital; be it rentals, housing, fuel, bus and rail fares, schooling, eating out, fast food, clothes, entertainment, etc.
Tell any housewife, house husband or working mother in Colombo about ‘Colombo being among the cheapest cities in the world,” and prepare to get ejected from their homes! A cursory glance at prices show basic everyday items like brinjal, pumpkin, coconut, dhal, carrot, beans, eggs, chicken and fish soaring over the past year, some by as high as 50 per cent.
Simple, grown-in-the-backyard stuff like lime, green chillie or green leaves like gotukola, mukunuwanna or kankun are beyond the reach of the common man. In fact inflation (whatever the policy makers may say or argue with ‘astounding’ statistics) is much higher than many (global) cities. Maybe the rate of increase is not that high but the base rate is at never-before levels.
Fuel prices are on the rise and that puts pressure on every item that has a transportation component.
The report on the cheapest cities in the world which includes Colombo will no doubt warm the cockles of the hearts of policymakers and the tourism industry. But in the case of the tourism industry, this may not be the real situation because the total tourism product for a traveller – staying in graded hotel establishments (3-5 star), cost of food, cost of transportation, airport taxes, airfare taxes and cost of entry to historical sites –is costlier than any competitive destination like India, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam or Cambodia. The facilities at cultural sites, where high prices are charged, are woefully inadequate and an embarrassment to any Sri Lankan as last week’s Business Times front-page picture of a tourist couple bending to read a faded description of a monument at Polonnaruwa shows.
This news comes during a cabinet reshuffle where new ministers have been appointed and older ones given new positions.
Sri Lanka now has a minister for sugar who would also, according to a government spokesman, double up as a minister in charge of bringing diabetes down!
Cabinet spokesperson and Minister Keheliya Rambukwella is reported to have said during a recent Cabinet media briefing that the Sugar Minister would most likely be allocated the task of controlling diabetes. If this is what he has ‘actually said’, it is another case of Rambukwella shooting off the hip without thinking and a classic style of who-cares-a-damn type of governance in the country. How on earth could a minister in charge of promoting the sugar industry, increasing production to reduce imports and, according to some reports, planning to set up 15 more sugar plants, prevail on people to eat less sugar? This is not only silly but an absurd form of governance that is a hallmark of the present regime.
Having said that, if one is to believe western media reports that ‘Colombo is amongst the cheapest cities in the world’, then the new cost – some Rs 400 million a month to maintain the new ministers and their staff alone – needs to brought into the equation. Add other extras and the latest cabinet shuffle would cost the Government an additional Rs 1 billion a month.
This is at a time when the Treasury is scraping the barrel to fund various ‘adventurous projects’ and was forced to reverse an ill-advised decision to double the cess on tea exports. The move, in which the line ministry (Plantations) and the Sri Lanka Tea Board, was unaware, drew angry protests from the tea trade, forcing the President (as Finance Ministry, one assumes) to step in and cancel the change.
There is no dispute over the fact that cost of living and inflation in Colombo and elsewhere is on the rise and has never come down (economists may argue otherwise over a bunch of statistics).
For every step the authorities take to ‘bring relief to the people’ by reducing the price of one consumer item, there are three or four other items that go up (elsewhere) in price through the imposition of a new tax or Government levy. The creation of new ministers and their cost is one example!
Whoever says Colombo is the cheapest city in the world, take it with a pinch of salt!
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