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| Sachs
calls for pragmatic approach to economic woes
Economic problems
ought to be approached in a pragmatic manner, focusing on real issues
and not with an abstract economic view which tends to ignore the
core economic problems of a country, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, a
world renowned economist, said last week. "In my
way of thinking I envision four interlocking circles or four interlocking
areas that interact to produce economic outcomes whether favourable
or unfavourable," he told a public meeting at the Central Bank's
Centre for Banking Studies. "Those four are - business investments and business environment, social environment, ecological environment connected to physical environment and the country's strategy or lack of strategy with regard to science and technology." Countries which have approached these four different broad areas of concern in an integrated manner have a "good shot" at economic growth, said Professor Sachs. These four dimensions have to be seen in an integrated pattern to understand the prospects and challenges of economic development. Only then is it possible to imagine a race towards economic growth in the coming years for the country. "As I look
around the world and try to understand why certain countries flourish
and others don't, having those four dimensions in mind has for me
been enormously helpful because countries could fail on one or two
of those dimensions and that could be enough to create a major crisis
in the overall economic development," he added. The usual ideas with regard to economic development is that the country has to implement a few economic reform measures, macro-economic stabilization and privatisation and that in turn would lead reliably to stable economic growth. "A lot of the world has in some way or the other tried to do that and sometimes it seems to trigger a spectacular result and other times not so spectacular. So that suggests a very limited, very partial prescription based on a very limited and very partial diagnosis of what are the underlying factors in development." The core of economic development in the long-term is technological advances, Sachs said. The reason that countries are able to achieve sustained economic development and the reason for the whole remarkable experience of modern economic growth is the advance of technology. Just as countries need a strategy for investing in health and education, countries need a strategy for building the scientific and technological capacity of the population. "One thing I can be sure of is that no country in Sri Lanka's position has been able to achieve a significant level of economic development without significant investments in operating the science and technological capacity of the population and of the engineers and researchers within the economy. Without that technological capacity it won't be possible to attract the kind of foreign direct investment that this island needs, it won't be possible to address the ecological challenges, it won't be able to achieve many of the other challenges on social development," said Professor Sachs. He said that without the penetration of IT the country will lose in two ways. The industrial base will remain small while cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai develop IT-enabled industries, which is creating a tremendous boom in southern India. Secondly, the ability to address, understand and solve ecological challenges will be unfulfilled. "Geographical environment plays a huge role in the economic outcome much more than we generally recognize. There is no intrinsic geographical barrier to Sri Lanka's economic growth. If Singapore can reach $30,000 per capita income as it has sitting astride the great trade lanes of Europe and Asia, well, so can you," said Prof. Sachs.With peace, economic integration should rise dramatically especially in the IT sector, textile, apparel and tourism and other sectors where there could be rapid growth, he said. A number of key industries could be developed quite rapidly with a dramatic inflow of foreign direct investment. The first issue is to improve Sri Lanka's port services and make it a much bigger source of income than it is today. Secondly is the information exchange technology in the country. Prof. Sachs emphasized tourism as a major area of income for the country. He said that tourism here is seen as something that brings in quick money in the short term and not in the long term. "International tourism is a highly sophisticated information technology enabled sector that provides tremendous linkages to the rest of the world as well as generating a major income," Prof. Sachs said. (RC) Loadstar training programme on CNC Loadstar (Pvt)
Ltd, a leading joint venture BOI company belonging to the Jinasena
group, has launched a programme to develop a human resource base
for skilled personnel to undertake the maintenance of CNC (Computer
Numerically Controlled) machine tools. The company
has arranged the first training programme of this kind on this topic
for about 35 engineers and technicians at the Loadstar Training
Centre, Ekala, Ja-Ela between January 21 and 24. It will be
conducted by an engineer from Bangalore-based Fanuc Ltd which has
years of expertise in this subject. The participants will include
those from Loadstar and outside. A Loadstar
statement said that the growth of the manufacturing sector in Sri
Lanka has seen the increasing use of CNC machine tools. Although
it is not estimated how many such machines are being used in the
country, many private sector industries and a few public sector
institutions are exploiting this technology. At least three out of the four engineering in Sri Lankan universities are equipped to a varying degree of sophistication with CNC technology. Australian power firm threatens pull out of stalled project By Hiran
Senewiratne BMC made a proposal to Sri Lanka in 1992 to commission a power project with an initial investment of $ 400 million dollars but a decade later the project is yet to be approved, complained BMC project Director Phillip Canham to the media recently. Canham explained
that initially the power station was to be developed in Trincomalee
in 1996 but was delayed due to LTTE activities in the area. According
to him, the Southern Development Ministry recently invited BMC to
make a presentation on the decades-old proposal while a government-Energy
Supply Committee had called for discussions recently but approval
for the project is yet to be given. He said that
BMC, comprising Pacific Power International of Australia and Sumitomo
Corporation of Japan, had developed coal power stations in Australia,
Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Vietnam "We are
at a loss to understand why the government is delaying this proposed
investment project that can supply power at $ 04 cents, much less
than current rates, consistently for 30 years." Currently consumers
pay Rs. 15.75 per unit.The total investment for this entire project
would run into $1 billion dollars. Project Coordinator and local representative, Aruna Goonetilleke said that private investors and overseas lending institutes would fund the project. There is no requirement for government funding for this power project. He said all the respective ministers were supportive from its inception but accused some unnamed top bureaucrats of deliberately delaying this project. He also said that at a time where power is urgently needed, it was necessary to cut red tape in the government on the approval processes. Goonetilleke said the project would generate employment for 10,000 people during the time of construction and a further 2,500 after commissioning the power station. The plant will use clean, state-of-the-art coal technology and low sulpher wash coal will be imported from Australia and South Africa. The company plans to build its own pier to unload the coal. Marks & Spencer chairman meets PM Luc Vandevelde,
Chairman of Marks & Spencer, met Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe
at his official residence in Colombo last week during a visit to
Sri Lanka. The PM thanked
Vandevelde for his continued support to Sri Lanka, who in turn said
he was impressed with the quality of Sri Lanka's products, infrastructure,
work ethic, high literacy rate and discipline of its labour force.
He assured the PM that his company would continue to maintain its
business ties with Sri Lanka. Commerce and
Consumer Affairs Minister Ravi Karunanayake asked the Marks &
Spencer boss the prospects of Colombo supplying food, vegetables
and furniture to the world-renowned department store and hoped trade
in this area could be expanded The meeting
was also attended by Denis Desmond, of Desmond Group UK, one of
Sri Lanka's largest investors, Janak Hirdaramani, Chairman Hirdaramani
Group, Ashraf Omar, Chairman MAST Lanka and Arjunna Mahendran, Chairman/Director
General Sri Lanka Board of Investment (BoI). The world famous 'St. Micheal' label apparel manufacturer, Marks & Spencer produces approximately 12 percent of its merchandise through Sri Lankan based companies, according to a BOI statement. Synergy creates a difference in learning The Synergy
School of Marketing says it has earned a reputation for award-winning
performances amongst the many institutes in Sri Lanka that offer
tutoring for the popular postgraduate diploma in marketing from
the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM UK). Established
in 1999 it is the only institute specialising in CIM that has developed
an exclusive marketing oriented approach and informal culture that
works well for CIM and emphasizes a difference in learning. Shan Jayasekara,
who handles MIMD at Synergy, says for any institute to excel, personal
dedication from lecturers and the staff is crucial. "I saw
a wealth of practicality in the way things were handled," he
says. "Students never had to worry about things like syllabus
coverage, assessment of answer scripts and the quality of handouts
etc." According to its co -founders Michael Ranasinghe and Mohamed Adamaly, a high degree of commitment is expected from the lecturers in order to maintain Synergy's philosophy of utmost professionalism. Operating at a comfortable level is one of the key issues. It is ensured that classes are not cluttered on weekdays and towards the examination, and that lecturers are disciplined in terms of preparation, co-ordination with each other, structuring and conducting lectures. |
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