Most of Sri Lanka’s development will be implemented through provincial councils
Most of Sri Lanka’s development work in future will take place under the provincial councils under a cabinet proposal, according to Deputy Minister of Policy Planning and Economic Affairs, Harsha de Silva. He was speaking at an event in Colombo last week where the European Union (EU) launched its first website of the EU –Support to District Development Programme (SDDP) website.
Launching the website.
He said issues of development were not restricted to certain countries of the world but has become a global phenomena these days. How one faces these issues rests on the ability of policy makers of countries. As far as Sri Lanka was concerned the challenges were enormous. “Every dollar that we borrow goes through our new ministry viz the Ministry of Policy Planning and Economic Affairs,” he said.
Development partners like the EU, UNDP, UNICEF, ILO, FAO, UNOPS, IFC, etc have been playing a very supportive role with the government of Sri Lanka particularly in district development work and in post conflict areas. “We have to pay a lot of attention to regional development, although a lot of work was done in the Western and the Southern provinces. I am glad that this project is happening in areas such as Mullaitivu,Vavuniya, Ampara and Batticaloa,” Dr. de Silva added.
The EU is Sri Lanka’ s largest export partner and remains the latter’s largest import partner accounting for 26 per cent of exports and eight per cent of goods from Europe. EU is also Sri Lanka’s second largest trading partner accounting for more than 15 percent of the total trade. Another milestone of the European Union is to assist Sri Lanka to rebuild the North and East areas following the post conflict.
EU Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives David Daly congratulated Sri Lankans for having shown commitment to a path of improving governance, rule of law and human rights amongst other things. He said it was 40 years ago when the EU signed the first Commercial Cooperation Agreement with Sri Lanka in 1975. “Since then we have come a long way together. Our relationship goes beyond the traditional donor–recipient to that of friendship.” He said Sri Lanka is going through a series of transformation under the new government of President Maithripala Sirisena and the EU welcomes his commitments to improve human rights, good governance, reconciliation and economic inclusiveness.
During the past 10 years the EU has allocated 760 million Euros to Sri Lanka (Rs.100 billion) to help rebuild lives and communities affected by the tsunami and by the war, to help resettle IDPS helping children get back to school, help farmers manage crops and to help people train for better jobs. Around a million people have benefitted from EU programmes over the years.
He said the new EU program with 30 million euros will be launched this year and focus on some poor areas of Central and Uva provinces. Although Sri Lanka has performed well under the Millennium Development Goals there are still pockets of poverty which are multiples of the national averages. The SDDP, an EU programme with 60 million euros, will help reduction of poverty through local development programmes.