Sri Lanka’s new CB Governor plans to ‘fear no one”, aims to restore integrity

The new Central Bank Governor Indrajith Coomaraswamy, who has vowed to restore the integrity of the bank and plans to ‘fear no one’ in the discharge of his duties, has called his first media briefing at 4 pm today (Tuesday) at the bank headquarters in Colombo.
Dr. Coomaraswamy took over from under-fire banker Arjuna Mahendran whose tumultuous 17-month reign was marred by allegations of insider trading in bond issues and Singaporean citizenship issues. A parliamentary probe is underway in the bond issue.
After a 48-hour drama in which both leaders of the Government, President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe refused to yield to issues over their nominees, Dr. Coomaraswamy, a Cambridge-educated economist, tipped the scales to be appointed on Saturday as a compromise candidate.
Soon after assuming duties on Monday, the new Governor addressing the staff said among his key challenges are to maintain integrity, technical excellence and professionalism at the bank as the guiding principles for “all of us as we go forward”.
He said that when he was appointed by the President, the latter told him to, “do your work in a straight way and do not fear anybody in discharging your duties”.
This, the Governor pointed out, is what he intended to do and “carry out my functions according to his (President’s) wishes”.
Coming from a sports background, having captained his college and national team in rugger, Dr. Coomaraswamy said that teamwork is essential to take the bank to new heights and meet the economic challenges in the new era.
He made an interesting point on politics and economics. “And you know there is always concern about the balance between politics and economics. In my view for much of our post independent years – I’m not putting this on one party or the other party, or one government or the other – but if you look back from 1948, for most of the time, politics has trumped economics. It is our job to convince our politicians that good economics is good politics. We need to, as a central bank, to get away from this cycle of stop – go policies, of creating artificial booms through misaligned policies. We need to set a good framework, as I said, for the economy. We have a representative democracy. The people elected by the people – the Government – of course have sovereignty reposed in them,” he said adding that he hoped to encourage a culture of discussion, of debate, of openness, “so please help me to do that”.
He said: “It should never be personal if somebody has a different opinion to you. We need to put our heads together. We will have different views, we need to throw it out in the open, discuss and then eventually, find the best way forward.”
He said the Monetary Law Act sets about some very specific responsibilities for the Central Bank. “And it is up to us to fulfill those responsibilities in a very technocratic, objective and free way. That is not to say that we should be criticizing the Government of the day. That is not our business. But there are channels through which we can get independent advice through the Government. I am very keen and I have spoken to our leaders too about this, that the Central Bank does its work independently and in a technical way and discretely advices the Government about what we think is the best way forward for those segments of policy and practice for which the Central Bank has responsibility. So, I need your cooperation.” - ENDS -