‘Current crisis has given us an opportunity to rectify wrong decisions’

By Shamindra Ferdinando

SLPP lawmaker and one-time prominent Viyathmaga activist Dr. Nalaka Godahewa says the government has not been able to bring talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to a successful conclusion for want of a cohesive action plan to reduce expenditure and increase revenue.The former Minister said so when The Island sought the former mercantile executive’s response to the current status of government negotiations with the IMF.

“The issue at hand is that we haven’t been able to convince the IMF of our plans to address the daunting task. The government cannot sidestep contentious issues as the IMF expects us to come up with a clear action plan to enhance income and reduce expenditure,” the Gampaha District MP said.

Responding to another query, Dr. Godahewa warned the government that finalization of an agreement with the IMF wouldn’t be possible as long as the government delayed presenting a proper plan. The lawmaker questioned the validity of the presentation made by the Finance Ministry to the IMF delegation. Had the government convinced the IMF and as well as other lenders an agreement could have been reached during the recently concluded talks in Colombo.

Participating in a discussion arranged by a group of Kelaniya undergraduates over the weekend, Dr. Godahewa explained the responsibility on the part of the government to reveal how it intended to repay debt.

Instead of repeatedly giving excuses and warnings of further deterioration of the economic status, the government should without further delay address four key issues namely how to increase foreign/domestic income, bring down expenditure in foreign currencies/domestic expenditure.

Dr. Godahewa said that the unprecedented economic crisis had given the incumbent government an opportunity to take appropriate remedial measures to rectify a spate of wrong decisions taken by successive governments over the past several decades. Unfortunately, the government seemed not capable of taking advantage of what the former media minister called a golden opportunity to push for required reforms with the support of all political parties represented in Parliament and other stakeholders, particularly the trade unions.

Dr. Godahewa warned that printing of currency notes continuously to meet budget deficit was nothing but a horrendous blunder.The government should concentrate on expenditure control while being tough on waste, corruption, irregularities and mismanagement, the new entrant to Parliament said. According to Dr. Godahewa, waste, corruption, irregularities and mismanagement perpetrated by successive administrations had caused significant loss of revenue over the years and the incumbent government was no exception, the ex-minister said.

Commenting on public sector enterprises, the Gampaha District lawmaker said that though there were 420 such ventures, the Treasury considered only 52 of them important. Of those categorized as important, the CEB (Rs 21.4bn), CPC (Rs.82.2 bn) and SriLankan Airlines (Rs 170.7 bn) suffered a staggering loss of Rs 270 bn in 2021.

Dr. Godahewa said the country could no longer afford to bear such huge losses. Therefore, restricting was nothing but an urgent necessity, the government MP declared, pointing out that the government lacked the wherewithal to sustain utterly incompetent public sector.

Dr. Godahewa gave a breakdown of the public sector. According to the latest available data, there were 1,402,000 in the state sector comprising ministries and departments 792,000, Provincial Councils and Local Government 390,000 and state enterprises 220,000.

In 2021 alone, their salaries and other payments cost the government Rs 845 bn whereas 672,000 pensioners received payments amounting to Rs 270 bn. Therefore, the total expenditure stood at Rs 1,115 bn (Rs 845 b +Rs 270 bn), Dr. Godahewa said, adding that amounted to staggering 80 percent of the total income.

The MP called for the pruning of the public sector declaring it was a very heavy burden. Public Administration Secretary Priyantha Mayadunne recently said that Sri Lanka could manage with about 500,000 public servants though the current strength of the public sector is 1.5 mn.Dr. Godahewa said that all unnecessary posts and positions should be gradually abolished.