When SL professionals are ignored …
View(s):While the previous regime pretended to use local professionals in economic development and economic diplomacy (the definition of trade promotion through foreign missions), the current rulers are not even pretentious in their thinking. Economic strategies and policy-making is in the hands of foreign experts while dubious contracts and tenders are raising questions with local companies and expertise being sidelined.
The net result: Sri Lanka’s economic direction will be foreign-driven while the contracts and (even) covering pot-holes on the roads are set to go to non-local parties (or probably a favoured few). And, adding insult to injury – the country’s two leaders (President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe) – are at different wave-lengths, whatever they may say in public.
The first indication of their opposing views came just a few months in government when the controversial Central Bank (CB) bond issue blew away the promise of good governance, transparency and accountability. Wickremesinghe chose to stave off the heat by appointing a 3-member probe committee comprising UNP lawyers. This was followed by a public pronouncement (on national television) by Sirisena that he had advised the PM that CB Governor Arjuna Mahendran should quit. Both the PM and Mahendran chose to ignore a Presidential request. These were the first cracks in a Yahapalanaya government formed by the UNP and a section of the SLFP.
The ‘antics’ of the Finance Minister, the latest being his horrendous invitation to invite foreign funds to Sri Lanka under a “no questions asked” policy, a suggestion that was rejected by bankers, is also been frowned on by the President. The organisation and eventual decisions at the recent economic summit driven by Harvard economists and billionaire businessman George Soros disappointed many Sri Lankan economists. Business Times Columnist and economist Prof. Sirimevan Colombage, in his column “Domino Effects” said: “These kinds of economic forums are a common event in many parts of the world nowadays. While such forums are expected to facilitate economic advancement in the host countries, they provide enormous fortunes to the so-called ‘foreign experts’ at the expense of poor countries like ours without contributing much either to upgrade the knowledgebase or to make innovative policy changes”.
He also noted that, “… the country is not short of bright ideas, but short of visionary political leaders who can transform such ideas into action”.
The Sri Lanka Economists Association (SLEA), an association representing the crème de la crème of economists, wasn’t invited as a body at the summit while few local economists took part (or were invited). One hopes the forthcoming Euromoney conference will not take the same route of the January summit. To provide some perspective of the importance of the SLEA in policy-making, it was the association that exposed corruption – in terms of financial losses – as far back as 2007 which eventually led to the fall of the President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s regime in 2015.
Meeting journalists at a February 2015 discussion, Prof. A.D.V. de S. Indraratna, founder President of the SLEA, referred to the 2007 SLEA report on corruption, and said: “We were the first to blow the lid on corruption in Sri Lanka.
In 2006, the year of review in the report, the corruption under the former regime was equivalent to the value of 8.7 per cent of GDP (value Rs. 2,098.004 million). If this was invested, GDP would have grown by 2 per cent more”. Prof. Indraratne said that report “went into the dustbin of history” until former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka resurrected it during the 2010 presidential election campaign where corruption was his main issue. The ‘dustbin of history’ is where Sri Lankan professionals fear they would be relegated to if their expertise and experience is not (adequately) used, the country, eventually, suffering the most.
These concerns were further illustrated in an appeal to the President this week by a group of professionals with the letter signed by Dr. T.L. Gunaruwan, Prof. Amal Kumarage, Dr. Nirmal Devasiri and Prof. Sarath Wijesuriya, who said the appeal was being made “as there were certain measures detrimental to the pledge given by you to the public”. The letter said that competitive open bidding and procurement procedures were lacking and opened the doors for corruption and fraud in the procurement, wastage of national resources and harmed the procurement quality. The group said the hopes and aspirations of the professional community and others who worked toward good governance have been shattered, and called on the President to put a stop to these trends.
The letter was endorsed by other professionals including Chandra Jayaratne, Tilak Siyambalapitiya, Priyal de Silva, Dr. Sumana Liyanage and Dr. Rangika Halwathura, and academics from the universities of Colombo, Peradeniya. Moratuwa, Wayamba and Sabaragamuwa The saving grace for the government is that the opposition is at sixes and sevens and unable to be a credible force to represent the people or those concerned. In such a situation, those who placed their trust in the new regime are forced to look on with disgust and helplessness while the country’s resources are frittered away. As Prof Colombage says, the country is not short of bright ideas (or people) but of visionary political leaders who can transform such ideas into action (and utilise Sri Lanka’s brightest).0