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Home » ColumnsLanka’s envoy defends big deals with India’s Adani group
Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner Milinda Moragoda, had a tough time answering some political questions posed by New Delhi-based foreign journalists related to the Adani deals and Chinese influence. He was addressing a media conference organised by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia, on Tuesday. One journalist asked why the Adani deals which were handed [...]
Profiteering ‘prophets’
My dear Pastor Jerome, I thought of writing to you like this because I am not sure where you are, although you have said you will return to Paradise today. It must be a novel experience for you, isn’t it, being almost unknown among the general public a week ago and becoming the hot topic [...]
From economic contraction to economic growth in 2024
There is little doubt that the economy would contract by about 3 percent this year. There is an expectation that the economy would get on to a growth path next year. However, there are several global and domestic downside risks. This year There is little doubt that the economy would contract this year. All three [...]
Playing with public anger through nonsensical laws
When French Prime Minister during World War I, Georges Clemenceau rousingly said that ‘war is too important to be left to the generals,’ Sri Lankans may be justified in muttering to themselves more than a hundred years later that, ‘laws are far too important to be left to the lawyers – or to Ministers of [...]
End of armed conflict yet to yield desired benefit to the country
The defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009 gave rise to hope that the country could traverse the road to peace and prosperity by creating national unity and strengthening the economy. The past 14 years have unfortunately only seen the peoples’ hopes to go up in smoke, and today the [...]
No miracles but manacles await Pastor Jerome’s promised coming
Buddhist sensitivities were outraged this week after Jerome Fernando, the self-proclaimed prophet, made an unwarranted attack on the Buddha, casting him in inferior light to Jesus, and claiming the Buddha, born 500 years before Christ, was searching for Jesus’ light. In a controversial video released on April 30 on his YouTube channel, he has not [...]
Food for thought and surviving the new GSP+
It was Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman who once said there is nothing called a free lunch. He should know. Critics claim that his free-enterprise philosophy and abjuring state intervention in business left many without any lunch. Friedman’s policies, absorbed by international bodies such as the IMF, which itself is supposedly backed by American big [...]
From economic contraction to economic growth in 2024
There is little doubt that the economy would contract by about 3 percent this year. There is an expectation that the economy would get on to a growth path next year. However, there are several global and domestic downside risks. This year There is little doubt that the economy would contract this year. All three [...]
Controversy over tight security cordon around Colombo
Troops were ready to cope with violence and bloodletting but there was none Tamil parties talk with President on interim measures but they provoke only heated exchanges Uphill task for Ranil in resolving key issues relating to ethnic reconciliation based on 13th Amendment By our Political Editor Only the war with Tiger guerrillas is over. The other [...]
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