Sri Lanka's efforts to double its per capita income from its current level of US $2,000 to $4,000 in the next five or six years is going to be a ‘fast and furious’ undertaking, according to the country's Central Bank head Ajith Nivard Cabraal. He further added that the ‘sedate pace that Sri Lanka was used to’ is no longer applicable.
He also revealed that, for the country to reach its income-doubling goal, lending by financial institutions had to increase from its current total of Rs. 1,000 billion to Rs. 4,000 billion.
Mr. Cabraal also noted that, while the last two years had been very challenging for the global financial community, with one western country alone experiencing 132 bank failures, the local market had only been subject to ‘vibrations’ which were now in the process of being addressed. No banks had failed in Sri Lanka, he added.
Mr. Cabraal's comments were made at this week's annual convocation of the Institute of Bankers of Sri Lanka (IBSL), a government body tasked with educating bankers. IBSL has 32,000 students in 23 accredited training facilities island-wide; also it has recently extended its offerings to the Maldives with other countries in the region also requesting it to provide educational services to them.
Meanwhile, according to the IBSL annual report, the organisation's income has increased to around Rs. 70 million from about Rs. 55 million in the previous financial year. |
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