President should intervene in stock market
As usually happens in this country, President Mahinda Rajapaksa will have to intervene to clear the mess created by bungling bureaucrats at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
In the present stock market calamity, the SEC acted the same way the Central Bank acted on the Sakvithi and Golden Key affairs.

The SEC was slumbering and let the market function at an unusually high level. All of a sudden it came up with some unusual set of laws as to punish the investors for being in the market. The market which gained gradually at the end of the war, was ruined within a few hours by some bureaucrats.

After the crash many small investors are facing serious problems as they had lost their marginal profits and also are unable to pay the brokers. In a way for some it is another Sakvithi / Golden Key situation - specially the people who turned to the stock market due to the lowering of interests by the government on fixed deposits which was their sole income, who are are badly hit. The SEC should have been intelligent enough not to shatter the entire market just because it saw some suspicious movements in some stocks.

B.S.Perera
Kiribathgoda

Senior citizens on Golden Key payments

With reference to the news item in the Business Times on August 8 about the second round of payments at Golden Key (GK), we depositors understood through such news reports that while the total amount involved in GK amounted to approximately Rs 26 billion the total value of GK assets amounted to about Rs 70 plus billion.

We are therefore surprised to read that a second round of Rs.100,000 is to be made instead of the full amount due to us or at least 50 – 75 % of the balance.

As every one is aware, many of the depositors with deposits under Rs 2.5 million are senior citizens in their “seventies”, who have deposited their Provident Fund and other savings and therefore, need some sympathy. It is therefore suggested that such depositors be settled in full in the next round of payments, as they have been deprived of even the 20 % bonus on interest at banks.

Senior Citizen, Athurugiriya.