The Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs

by Leelananda de Silva

One day in late November 1970, I received a telephone call from Professor H.A.de.S Gunasekara who had been appointed Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Planning and Employment (MY/P&E) in July 1970. This was the same ministry of planning and economic affairs of Dr. Gamani Corea, but it changed its name for a couple of years until it reverted to the ministry of planning and economic affairs (MY/P&EA) after 1973.

I will relate that story later, and I shall describe my ministry as MY/P&EA throughout. H.A.de.S had been my lecturer at the university and knew me well. He offered me the newly created post of Senior Assistant Secretary (SAS) in the Ministry. He told me that I would be in charge of administration, and the management of cabinet affairs, this being an important task, as the ministry received almost all cabinet papers for observations.

I assumed duties at the MY/ P&EA in December 1970, and I was to hold the same position for the next seven years, until December 1977. From mid-1971, in addition to being SAS, I was to be the Director of the Division of Economic Affairs, which came about through the merger of the previous general economic affairs and private sector divisions. This division, over the next five years managed that part of Sri Lanka’s international economic relations which were dealt through the United Nations (UNCTAD, ECAFE, UN General Assembly, UNDP in New York, FAO, the Commonwealth and others) and North-South and Non Aligned matters, leading to the Non Aligned Summit in August 1976.

The Division also kept up its responsibilities for the private sector. To have reached the position of SAS in one of the leading ministries of government at the age of 34 was something to be pleased about.

At this point, let me briefly describe what the MY/ P&EA was. It had been established in 1965 by the then Prime Minister, Dudley Senanayake, with Dr. Gamani Corea as the permanent secretary, and it came directly under the Prime Minister. During the 1965 – 1970 period, it was the pre- eminent ministry, with the ministry of finance playing a subsidiary role.

Dudley Senanayake was fully engaged in domestic economic policy making, and the Minister of Finance, U.B. Wanninayake, was happy to go along with this arrangement. After 1970, the Prime Minister and Minister of Planning was Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike, and she was much less engaged in domestic economic policy making. She led a coalition government, sharing power with the LSSP and CP. The Minister of Finance was Dr. N.M. Perera, leader of the LSSP and a dominant political personality.

Between 1970 and 1977, the planning ministry was a partner with the ministry of finance in managing domestic economic affairs, and there was much tension in the relationship. H.A.de.S was not as close to the Prime Minister Mrs. Bandaranaike as Gamani Corea was to Dudley Senanayake. There was personal acrimony in his relationship with the finance minister Dr. N.M. Perera. Whatever the tensions the MY/ P&EA and the ministry of finance had to get on. The central bank’s role was relatively subsidiary. The MY/ P&EA had a particular task of managing the capital budget of the government, and dealing with foreign aid, apart from other domestic and foreign economic policy issues.

The seven years (1970 – 1977) I spent at the Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs were the best years of my career. The ministry was right at the centre of government. I had responsibilities, both in domestic and foreign affairs. The foreign and international component of my work evolved rapidly from 1973, as Sri Lanka became actively involved in non-aligned matters, leading to the Summit in Colombo in August 1976. The Prime Minister appointed me to be the Secretary of the Economic Committee of the Summit.

This period overlapped with the North-South dialogue taking place at the time in various UN bodies and elsewhere, and for which my division was responsible. From 1975, over the next three years, about three fourths of my time was spent on international economic relations. This work entailed travelling to many parts of the world for meetings and conferences, and many times accompanying the Prime Minister, starting with the Non-Aligned Summit in Algiers in 1973.

I worked closely with the ministry of foreign Affairs during this period. My division of economic affairs, handled almost all UN economic issues, and the division during this period was almost a part of the ministry of foreign affairs. That is how the Prime Minister wanted it. I was also engaged with the economic side of the Commonwealth, and attended two Commonwealth summits in Kingston, Jamaica in 1975 (accompanying the Prime Minister) and London in 1977.

At these summit meetings, and in the bilateral visits where I accompanied the Prime Minister, I had the opportunity to observe diplomacy at the highest levels. One special event in March, 1974 was the 30th annual sessions of the Economic Commission for the Asia and Far East (ECAFE) held in Colombo. (ECAFE changed its name to ESCAP at these annual sessions.) I was entrusted with the task of organizing the event, and I was the secretary-general of the conference. This was the first ever international conference held at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BMICH) and the largest in Sri Lanka.

Aside from foreign affairs, which became a dominant feature after 1973, 1 had many responsibilities on the domestic side. Relations with the cabinet for the ministry was my responsibility. I had to produce a note every week to the Prime Minister on the cabinet agenda. This provided in summary form the contents of the important cabinet papers, and the observations of the planning ministry on each of these cabinet papers. The Note never exceeded two pages.

The Prime Minister saw the Ministry of Planning as assisting her in her relations with the cabinet. I worked closely with the cabinet secretariat, and I had the opportunity to be present at cabinet meetings, at the behest of the Prime Minister. I was in charge of the administration of the ministry, which expanded during these years. I was entrusted with the task of overseeing the Department of Census and Statistics, Water Resources Board, National Film Corporation, and the Export Promotion Secretariat, all of which came under the ministry.

I had responsibilities for the ministry’s relations with the private sector. I represented the ministry on many Boards and Corporations – the Sri Lanka Tea Board, Ceylon Shipping Corporation (CSC), Port Cargo Corporation, Colombo Dockyards Limited, Ceylon Freight Bureau, Mackinnon Mackenzie and Company (a private company, 40 percent of it owned by CSC), the United States Educational Foundation (now the Fulbright Commission). I was Alternate Director for Sri Lanka of the Asian Productivity Organization in Tokyo.

My tasks were not restricted by any job description. The Prime Minister and the Ministry Secretary assigned me other tasks from time to time. One of them was the organization of negotiations for the payment of compensation for Sterling Company Estates which were taken over. I was a Member and Secretary of the Committee which handled this question and negotiated with British interests. Another was the Cabinet Committee on the Brain Drain, which the Prime Minister appointed, largely at my suggestion, and eventually, published an agreed report on this question. I was assistant secretary of this Committee, and virtually the secretary.

Other key tasks were the international negotiations on tea, mostly in Rome, where I represented the government with others. I also handled for the ministry, the high-profile Seers Mission, which visited Sri Lanka in 1971 to advice the government on economic and social issues. There were numerous other activities I was engaged in, which I shall not describe here. There was nothing routine in the work of the Planning Ministry.

Let me try to remember those with whom I worked at the time, 40 years ago. The Prime Minister and the Minister of Planning and Economic Affairs, Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike, was a constant presence in one’s working life. We did not make a distinction between her Prime Ministerial role and Ministerial role. It was all one. There was the clear impression that the MY/ P&EA was in effect part of the Prime Minister’s extended office.

Since the creation of MY/ P&EA, Prime Ministers tended to rely on it for substantive domestic economic policy management. The Prime Minister was the best Minister one could have. She was very responsive to the advice of her officials and she sought such advice. That did not mean that she always accepted the advice. She had other considerations, specially political, but I have never seen her belittle official advice.

Mrs Bandaranaike always kept a calm head and was consistently courteous to her officials. She was very rarely angry and had a tremendous sense of humour. I had contact with her at several levels. First, at the weekly meeting, the Prime Minister had with senior officials of the MY/ P&EA. I had contact with her on cabinet issues and many times on a Wednesday when the cabinet met. In the latter years, my contact with her increased on foreign economic policy issues, specially non-aligned and north South issues. I saw her when she was on her foreign travels as I accompanied her on these trips. My memory remains of a cordial relationship during these seven years when I worked for her.

I had almost daily contact with H.A.de.S, either on the telephone or at meetings. It was easy to get on with him and only on a very few occasions have I seen him really angry. By nature he was friendly, although he had a touch of insecurity, which was ingrained in his nature. Having been an academic, and a distinguished one at that, he developed a more political approach during his tenure at the ministry. He was not anxious to listen to theoretical economic advice. He was not interested in the economic discussions that were taking place in the United Nations and non aligned circles and he left all that to me.

When I suggested to him that he attend some of these conferences, he told me that what he wished was to avoid them. His major interest was in domestic economic policy and in taking planning and development to the regional and district levels. He travelled considerably more than Gamani Corea within the island. I remember one incident clearly. The then UN resident coordinator, C. Hart Schaf (must be in about 1972) had come to see H.A.de.S and was kept waiting for nearly an hour. I was passing by and Hart Schaf whom I knew well brought his situation to my notice.

I walked in to H.A.de.S ‘s office and suggested to him that he should see Hart Schaf. His response was that he was not looking for UN jobs and was not in the business of pleasing UN officials. Anyway, he saw Hart Schaf immediately. H.A.de.S had a dim view of UN activities in general. I was not in Sri Lanka when H.A.de.S passed away after his Ministry days and his last two years were not happy. I owe a lot to him and look back with pleasure and gratitude.upon a close friendship with him and his wife, Leela who was my contemporary and friend at the university,

During these seven years, I was in close touch with three senior officials from outside MY/P&EA. M.D.D. (Dharmasiri) Piers, who was Secretary to the Prime Minister, was one of the finest officials I have worked with. I had to be in close contact with him, as I had to be in touch with the Prime Minister. Most senior officials of the MY/P&EA had contacts with Dharmasiri. I would think the job of Secretary to the Prime Minister requires a very high level of administrative, diplomatic, and substantive skills, and Dharmasiri was possessed of all these qualities.

Dharmasiri was always pleasant to work with, with a great sense of humour and an inner calmness, which I have rarely come across in senior officials. I had the opportunity to travel with him abroad and that was enjoyable and productive. We have kept in touch even to this day, and he and his wife Chitra, have been close friends of ours. W.T. Jayasinghe, Secretary of Foreign Affairs was another fine gentleman. A highly able man, who was a workaholic, he never lost his sense of humour.

He had what might be called perspective in dealing with issues. He was always kind and generous to me and I remember travelling with him to Rome and Algiers, a trip I shall later describe. Rukmal and I were friends of W.T. and his wife Brenda and this friendship continued until W.T. and Brenda passed away a few years back. Arthur Basnayaka, Director General of Foreign Affairs is another official I had a close working relationship with. An unassuming, charming man, he had seen the diplomatic circuit in many incarnations and carried out his duties without any sense of self importance.

He always saw the funny side of things. Traveling with him was always a pleasure. His wife Damini and her family were friends of Rukmal’s family. I was lucky to have had these three senior officials to work with. There were no problems of demarcation as to whose task it was, with these three officials, when discussing subjects with the Prime Minister. One other person I should mention in this context is Dr. Mackie Ratwatte, the Prime Minister’s brother and private secretary, whom I saw frequently and traveled with on many occasions. He was a gentle and self effacing person who was always helpful.

In my own division of economic affairs there were several fine officials, W.S (Wilfred) Nanayakkara was deputy director of economic affairs. He was of great assistance to me in several of my tasks, specially in organizing the ECAFE annual sessions in Colombo in 1974, and also in the work with the United Nations in New York. Rukmal and I were friends with his wife Malkanthi. Lloyd Fernando, who became deputy director, was there for some time, before he proceeded abroad on post graduate work.

Hilary Codipilly was an assistant director before he proceeded to the World Bank. There were two bright ladies who were assistant directors- Chandra Wickramasinghe (later Rodrigo) and Indrani Sri Chandrasekara. They were particularly helpful in the run up to the ECAFE conference held in Colombo. Indrani left us after three years and she was later employed in Washington at the International Food and Policy Research Institute. Chandra Rodrigo was to later become professor of economics at Colombo university, and she was highly regarded in academic circles for her research into labour market issues. She was released to us from the university for two or three years.

H.A.de.S and I were very keen to get more young lecturers from the university for short spells at the ministry but university authorities were not keen on this. There were several outstanding clerical servants who worked with me in the division. I could leave a lot to them. Upali Gunawardane (whose untimely death in the 1980s was a great loss to me), M. Sally and Heather Schumacher deserve special mention.

Walvin Perera, who was the accountant in the ministry, relieved me of any worries in managing the financial and accounting side of the work. He was an excellent finance manager. Egerton Baptist, the well-known Buddhist scholar, was my stenographer, and he was outstanding and always out to point out to me my mistakes, as he had an excellent command of English. We kept him on even after the age of 60, as he was irreplaceable as a stenographer, and his type was fast vanishing from the public service scene.

Apart from these officials in and outside the ministry that I have referred to, there were others within the ministry with whom I had working relations. Several of them had come over from the Gamani Corea administration. Godfrey Gunatilaka was Director of Plan Implementation, and was soon to be Additional Secretary of the Ministry. Godfrey was an outstanding public servant who had made an enormous contribution in assisting Gamani Corea to establish the Ministry of Planning and embarking on a concerted effort to improve the systems of economic planning in the country.

He was soon to leave the ministry to establish the Marga Institute, one of the earliest development research instituted in Asia. I was to work with him later in the Third World Forum in Geneva. Godfrey was a close advisor to Gamani Corea in UNCTAD. I have known Godfrey and his wife Bella now for over 40 years and we are now family friends. He is now the Chairman of the Gamani Corea Foundation.

Godfrey, if he did not join the civil service, would have been the Professor of English at the university. Lal Jayawardane continued in the perspective planning division and later became an additional secretary for a brief period. Nihal Kappagoda, who was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, took over from David Loos as Director of External Resources. He had made an important contribution in developing the mechanism of the foreign exchange budget. He left to join the International Development Research Centre of Canada (IDRC).

Tudor Kulatilake was director of regional development and he left to join the World Bank. All these officials left sometime between 1971 and 1973. A newcomer to the ministry was Dr. M.R.P Salgado, from the IMF and originally from the central bank (he was a brilliant mathematical economist from Cambridge), to be an additional secretary of the ministry. His stay was short, lasting only one year. Ranji Salgado and his wife Surangani are our family friends, and relations.

Dr Ananda Meegama, formerly of the University at Peradeniya, and a distinguished demographer and statistician, came as Director General of Planning and later became an additional secretary. Later Ananda was to hold the office of Director of the UN Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific in Tokyo for 10 years. He was one of the influential figures during the latter period of the ministry. Ananda and wife Indrani have been our close friends since that time. Indrani is the author of a superb history of her old school Mahamaya College, Kandy.

Another newcomer was Mervyn (MA) De Silva who had been a former editor of the Dinamina to take over the new function of director of information. Mervyn was great fun and had vast knowledge of the local political and media scene. He was a friend of Esmond Wickremesinghe (father of Ranil Wickremesinghe) and I got to know him through Mervyn. Esmond was to visit us in Geneva many times later on.

One other person with whom I had a cordial relationship in the ministry, was the Deputy Minister, Ratne Deshapriya Senanayaka, Member of Parliament for Minneriya. He had a close political relationship with the Prime Minister, but as a Deputy Minister, there were no dealings with his Minister and Prime Minister. He was not involved with the work of the ministry and he hardly had any meetings with officials of the ministry. Once in a way he met with HAdeS and with me. The Prime Minister did not expect her deputy minister to be active within the ministry. She had asked him at some point to take the message of planning to the people, and he was active in the country at a political level and addressing meetings.

He worked closely with Mervyn de Silva, the director of information. Ratne Deshapriya was a fine man and was a good friend. He once told me that if there are any political problems, I should contact him and he would sort them out. Once after the ECAFE annual sessions in 1974 at the BMICH, there was some displeasure among one or two ministers as to their seating arrangements at the ceremonial opening and they were making some complaints. Ratne Deshapriya told them that the Prime Minister was pleased with the conference and that they should not be critical of some slight they might have felt, which was totally unintended. That ended the matter.

Once the coalition government broke up in 1975, the MYP&EA for the next two years regained its old importance. With Felix Dias Bandaranaiake as the new Minister of Finance, H.A.de.S established a close relationship with him. It was H.A.de.S who mooted the idea of a revaluation of the currency and the Minister of Finance agreed to it. This was politically necessary, as the government had lost its majority in parliament and was finding it difficult to raise domestic rupee resources for its expenditures.

The central bank initially opposed the idea of revaluation. It was more a personal confrontation between the governor and H.A.de.S, rather than a difference on policy. The Prime Minister was receiving contrary advice from the central bank and from the ministries of planning and finance. The Prime Minister called me at home one morning and asked me what I thought about this. I suggested to her that she should call Herbert Tennakoon, the Governor of the Bank to see her privately, and then request him to agree to what the ministries of finance and planning are proposing. That is what she did and the matter was resolved.

Also in 1975, the Minister of Finance amended the Monetary Law Act to include the Secretary of the Planning Ministry on the Monetary Board of the Central Bank, although the Governor of the Bank opposed it.

(Excerpted from Leelananda De Silva’s autobiography, The Long Littleness of Life. A member of the Sri Lanka Administrative Service, from 1960-78, he was Senior Assistant Secretary and Director of Economic Affairs at the Ministry o Planning and Economic Affairs in the 1970s working closely with Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike. He thereafter worked for many years as a senior international consultant for several UN and non-UN bodies.)