Ranil’s budget anecdote from 1991

In his inaugural budget speech as the Minister of Finance the President came out with an interesting revelation. Recollecting a personal experience when he was the Minister of Industries in 1991, he said that the Minister of Industries of Vietnam had come to Sri Lanka wanting to study Sri Lanka’s open economy and industrial strategies.

He had diligently studied the methods here and gone back to Vietnam. In 1995 our foreign reserves stood at USD 2.1 billion and Vietnam’s were USD 1.3 billion. The Vietnamese Minister had studied our methods and implemented what he had seen here in his own country. As a result, in 2021 the foreign reserves of Vietnam are USD 109.4 billion whereas ours are USD 3.1 billion.

This reminds us of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew’s visit here in 1956. He stated that it would be good if he could bring Singapore to the standard of Sri Lanka. This was a time when Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) was way ahead of all the other Asian countries except Japan. He developed Singapore to what it is today. But Sri Lanka went backwards and at present we stand way behind all the other Asian countries thanks to our short-sighted political leaders.

There have been many ministers of this country who have gone to various countries to observe how their industries, agriculture, tourism and fisheries industries are functioning. They enjoy the trip, come back home giving nothing to our own country from what they have observed. We will never learn.

HM NISSANKA WARAKAULLE