Features

Some Strengths and Weaknesses of the Budget Speech 2022

Published

4 years ago

2021/11/29

By Dr Laksiri Fernando

The budget speech that the Minister of Finance Basil Rajapaksa delivered in Parliament on 12 November 2021 was fairly structured with the following sections. That is a positive.

1. Preface.

2. ‘Global Challenges.’

3. Our Strengths.

4. The Challenges Before Us.

5. Policy Synopsis.

6. Development of the National Economy.

7. Revenue Proposals.

8. Macro-Economic Vision for Revival.

9. Conclusion.

But its content was the question owing to boasting, half-truths, contradictions, and unachievable pronouncements. If the Opposition was serious about countering the wrong policies, weaknesses, errors, etc., of the Budget, it could have possibly used the same format. Democratic politics is not about a ‘gang war’ between the government and the Opposition as appears to be the case in today’s Parliament. Debates should be more critical on the flawed policies with alternative perspectives being offered. .

In parliamentary democracies, there are ‘shadow cabinets’ and ‘shadow ministers.’ There should be a ‘Shadow Minister for Finance.’ It is mainly his/her role to present counter arguments, expose false data, and criticise misleading policies. The Opposition also should have a ‘official website’ where they could publish counterarguments or counter budgetary policies. Of course, it is also the duty of the media (as it is fairly done), academics and journalists to do the same critically and objectively.

A Family Preface?

The Preface correctly says, “We are passing through perhaps the most painful period of human civilisation.” This should mean the environmental disasters, Covid-19 pandemic and deaths, increasing poverty in poor countries, and evolving economic crises worldwide and others. Of course, these are challenges even in Sri Lanka. As a solution, he says:

“I first come to learn the concept of ‘Challenging the Challenges’ for the betterment of the public in my ancestral home in Madamulana. The Rajapaksas have a history of never being daunted by challenges. Mr. D. M. Rajapaksa, who is known as the “the Lion of Ruhuna”, who represented the second State Council in 1936, is known by the entire country. He is my father’s elder brother (loku thaththa).”

If the Minister was serious about the public nature of the challenges, he should not have given purely a family perspective on the subject. His phrase ‘Challenging the Challenges’ is a common phrase in many languages and in quotations of many authors. Tracing it to Madamulana may be suitable to a D.M. Rajapaksa oration, but not to a preface of a Budget speech.

He does not stop there. In the remaining eight paragraphs of the Preface (1.4 to 1.11) he boasts of his family, loku thatha, thatha, aiya, malli, thama, and their achievements. This is undoubtedly a record in Budget speeches in the world. He places Mahinda Rajapaksa at the center of this legacy who, in fact, got disgracefully defeated in 2015. This is what the Minister says: “The Hon. Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse, who is today in this House, is at the centre of the Rajapaksa Political Legacy.”

There is no mention of other Ministers, the Cabinet, or its collective responsibility. Not a word about other parties or its leaders other than what he has created as Podu Jana Peramuna.

Challenging the Global Challenges

The Finance Minister is correct in briefly outlining five global challenges: (1) increasing global social and economic disparities between the rich and the poor, (2) the slow progress in achieving the (UN) sustainable goals, (3) increasing environmental catastrophes, (4) limited assistance from bi-lateral and multilateral institutions, and (5) challenges in adopting to the post-pandemic ‘new normal.’

The degeneration of moral and ethical standards worldwide, particularly among political leaders with corruption, deals, misdeeds, and authoritarianism, is not mentioned at all.

However, without much relevance, he states, “The impact is worse on countries with trade focused economies such as ours compared to those economies dominated by the manufacturing sector.”

Even if his ‘vision’ of turning the present economy of Sri Lanka from ‘trade focused’ to ‘manufacture dominated,’ is commendable, the global challenges that he has outlined have nothing much to do with the difference. To my knowledge of economics, trade and manufacture are complimentary. While Sri Lanka undoubtedly should promote manufacture, a balanced approach might be the best without promoting one against the other as he has done. It is in the same section that he has arrived at a figure of Rs. 500 billion.

“The opportunity to provide such services, both domestically and externally has been curtailed, resulting in a loss of income. As a result, the loss of revenue to the country and the Treasury has been unlike any other year before. The loss to the Treasury, according to our estimates, is over Rs. 500 billion.”

The nature of local productions and nature of exports undoubtedly are reasons for our economic predicaments and underdevelopment. Therefore, it will be commendable if the government makes genuine efforts to change the situation. But the claim that this year’s loss to the Treasury of Rs. 500 billion is purely a result of this economic imbalance is unbelievable unless the government supplies concrete evidence for the claim. This loss or a major part of it appears to be a result of mismanagement of imports and exports, and the enormous tax concessions given to the rich by the last Budget. Without direct import controls, higher taxes could have been imposed on unnecessary or luxury imports. Dialogues with importers could have been another measure.

Bloated ‘Our Strengths’

It is quite superficial to talk about ‘our strengths’ just after talking about global challenges as if Sri Lanka were at the forefront of changing the world! At the beginning of this talk is the boast about Rajapaksa family and its leadership again. Both the President and the Prime Minister are praised. If the Budget speech was following a kind of SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis, with the strengths, the weaknesses also could have been discussed. That is the way to go about economic change.

Among the strengths, there is only one paragraph with four sentences on Infrastructure: “Our infrastructure facilities are of high standard. The quality of our ports, airports, telecommunications, highways, roads, and electricity supply are very good.” Of course, there are certain aspects to be ‘proud’ about, but some are still in preparation (ports). What about railways? They are still in the colonial heritage.

The Minister suddenly says: “Also, through the 100,000-kilometre road project and the 5,000 bridges programme, the byroad network will be strengthened further, and the entire country will become a single network.” This 100,000 km roads programme was there even in the last budget, the only addition being the 5,000 bridges. Perhaps, there is a new determination to go ahead because, as alleged by many people, these road constructions are beneficial to political supporters.

The third strength is named “Non-aligned, friendly international relations.” Nine international organisations are particularly mentioned like ‘the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Union, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the Kuwait Fund, the French Development Agency, the KfD, Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) the OPEC for International Development, and the UN.’

There is no mentioning of the IMF under friendly organisations.

It is also surprising and intriguing that China or Chinese organisations are not mentioned as friendly countries or organisations. Mahinda Rajapaksa’s budget speech last year had much emphasis on China. It might be too early, however, to speculate whether this shows a shift of alliances in the international context and relations.

Question of IMF?

However, under the next section on ‘the challenges before us,’ the IMF is mentioned with some negativity. Basil Rajapaksa refers to Dr. N. M. Perera’s budget speech of 1970/71 ostensibly to prove his argument.

“In that he [N. M. Perera] states that instead of building foreign exchange reserves, we have used it for the importation of goods creating a foreign reserve crisis and, thereby, seeking the support of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). From the first IMF facility in 1961, successive governments have resorted to short term assistance from the IMF, and our leaders and financial sector experts have failed in introducing a sustainable long-term programme to manage our foreign reserves.”

There is no question that a country should try to manage its foreign exchange reserves without going to the IMF, if possible. I believe that is what Dr. N. M. Perera said and tried to do it. Of course, there were others who went to the IMF as an easy escape.

However, during recent administrations (Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe) there has been a tendency to go for various dubious sources to seek foreign exchange loans and assistance when facing depleted reserves. Although no direct conditions are attached from these sources, these loans and deals have been a major reason for Sri Lanka’s deteriorating foreign exchange conditions throughout the years. There is no proper solution proposed in the Budget 2022 to this paradoxical situation.

Sri Lanka should not hesitate to go to the IMF. That is the most reliable and resourceful multilateral organisation, almost like a UN agency to deal with foreign exchange crises and reserves of member countries. It is up to the government to deal with the IMF properly, and negotiate any conditions attached when seeking foreign exchange or other assistance.

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Features

Recruiting academics to state universities – beset by archaic selection processes?

Published

14 mins ago

2026/03/3

Thilina Walpola

by Kaushalya Perera

Time has, by and large, stood still in the business of academic staff recruitment to state universities. Qualifications have proliferated and evolved to be more interdisciplinary, but our selection processes and evaluation criteria are unchanged since at least the late 1990s. But before I delve into the problems, I will describe the existing processes and schemes of recruitment. The discussion is limited to UGC-governed state universities (and does not include recruitment to medical and engineering sectors) though the problems may be relevant to other higher education institutions (HEIs).

How recruitment happens currently in SL state universities

Academic ranks in Sri Lankan state universities can be divided into three tiers (subdivisions are not discussed).

* Lecturer (Probationary)

– recruited with a four-year undergraduate degree. A tiny step higher is the Lecturer (Unconfirmed), recruited with a postgraduate degree but no teaching experience.

* A Senior Lecturer can be recruited with certain postgraduate qualifications and some number of years of teaching and research.

* Above this is the professor (of four types), which can be left out of this discussion since only one of those (Chair Professor) is by application.

State universities cannot hire permanent academic staff as and when they wish. Prior to advertising a vacancy, approval to recruit is obtained through a mind-numbing and time-consuming process (months!) ending at the Department of Management Services. The call for applications must list all ranks up to Senior Lecturer. All eligible candidates for Probationary to Senior Lecturer are interviewed, e.g., if a Department wants someone with a doctoral degree, they must still advertise for and interview candidates for all ranks, not only candidates with a doctoral degree. In the evaluation criteria, the first degree is more important than the doctoral degree (more on this strange phenomenon later). All of this is only possible when universities are not under a ‘hiring freeze’, which governments declare regularly and generally lasts several years.

Problem type 1

– Archaic processes and evaluation criteria

Twenty-five years ago, as a probationary lecturer with a first degree, I was a typical hire. We would be recruited, work some years and obtain postgraduate degrees (ideally using the privilege of paid study leave to attend a reputed university in the first world). State universities are primarily undergraduate teaching spaces, and when doctoral degrees were scarce, hiring probationary lecturers may have been a practical solution. The path to a higher degree was through the academic job. Now, due to availability of candidates with postgraduate qualifications and the problems of retaining academics who find foreign postgraduate opportunities, preference for candidates applying with a postgraduate qualification is growing. The evaluation scheme, however, prioritises the first degree over the candidate’s postgraduate education. Were I to apply to a Faculty of Education, despite a PhD on language teaching and research in education, I may not even be interviewed since my undergraduate degree is not in education. The ‘first degree first’ phenomenon shows that universities essentially ignore the intellectual development of a person beyond their early twenties. It also ignores the breadth of disciplines and their overlap with other fields.

This can be helped (not solved) by a simple fix, which can also reduce brain drain: give precedence to the doctoral degree in the required field, regardless of the candidate’s first degree, effected by a UGC circular. The suggestion is not fool-proof. It is a first step, and offered with the understanding that any selection process, however well the evaluation criteria are articulated, will be beset by multiple issues, including that of bias. Like other Sri Lankan institutions, universities, too, have tribal tendencies, surfacing in the form of a preference for one’s own alumni. Nevertheless, there are other problems that are, arguably, more pressing as I discuss next. In relation to the evaluation criteria, a problem is the narrow interpretation of any regulation, e.g., deciding the degree’s suitability based on the title rather than considering courses in the transcript. Despite rhetoric promoting internationalising and inter-disciplinarity, decision-making administrative and academic bodies have very literal expectations of candidates’ qualifications, e.g., a candidate with knowledge of digital literacy should show this through the title of the degree!

Problem type 2 – The mess of badly regulated higher education

A direct consequence of the contemporary expansion of higher education is a large number of applicants with myriad qualifications. The diversity of degree programmes cited makes the responsibility of selecting a suitable candidate for the job a challenging but very important one. After all, the job is for life – it is very difficult to fire a permanent employer in the state sector.

Widely varying undergraduate degree programmes.

At present, Sri Lankan undergraduates bring qualifications (at times more than one) from multiple types of higher education institutions: a degree from a UGC-affiliated state university, a state university external to the UGC, a state institution that is not a university, a foreign university, or a private HEI aka ‘private university’. It could be a degree received by attending on-site, in Sri Lanka or abroad. It could be from a private HEI’s affiliated foreign university or an external degree from a state university or an online only degree from a private HEI that is ‘UGC-approved’ or ‘Ministry of Education approved’, i.e., never studied in a university setting. Needless to say, the diversity (and their differences in quality) are dizzying. Unfortunately, under the evaluation scheme all degrees ‘recognised’ by the UGC are assigned the same marks. The same goes for the candidates’ merits or distinctions, first classes, etc., regardless of how difficult or easy the degree programme may be and even when capabilities, exposure, input, etc are obviously different.

Similar issues are faced when we consider postgraduate qualifications, though to a lesser degree. In my discipline(s), at least, a postgraduate degree obtained on-site from a first-world university is preferable to one from a local university (which usually have weekend or evening classes similar to part-time study) or online from a foreign university. Elitist this may be, but even the best local postgraduate degrees cannot provide the experience and intellectual growth gained by being in a university that gives you access to six million books and teaching and supervision by internationally-recognised scholars. Unfortunately, in the evaluation schemes for recruitment, the worst postgraduate qualification you know of will receive the same marks as one from NUS, Harvard or Leiden.

The problem is clear but what about a solution?

Recruitment to state universities needs to change to meet contemporary needs. We need evaluation criteria that allows us to get rid of the dross as well as a more sophisticated institutional understanding of using them. Recruitment is key if we want our institutions (and our country) to progress. I reiterate here the recommendations proposed in ‘Considerations for Higher Education Reform’ circulated previously by Kuppi Collective:

* Change bond regulations to be more just, in order to retain better qualified academics.

* Update the schemes of recruitment to reflect present-day realities of inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary training in order to recruit suitably qualified candidates.

* Ensure recruitment processes are made transparent by university administrations.

Kaushalya Perera is a senior lecturer at the University of Colombo.

(Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.)

Features

Talento … oozing with talent

Published

24 mins ago

2026/03/3

Thilina Walpola

Talento: Gained recognition as a leading wedding and dance band

This week, too, the spotlight is on an outfit that has gained popularity, mainly through social media.

Last week we had MISTER Band in our scene, and on 10th February, Yellow Beatz – both social media favourites.

Talento is a seven-piece band that plays all types of music, from the ‘60s to the modern tracks of today.

The band has reached many heights, since its inception in 2012, and has gained recognition as a leading wedding and dance band in the scene here.

The members that makeup the outfit have a solid musical background, which comes through years of hard work and dedication

Their portfolio of music contains a mix of both western and eastern songs and are carefully selected, they say, to match the requirements of the intended audience, occasion, or event.

Although the baila is a specialty, which is inherent to this group, that originates from Moratuwa, their repertoire is made up of a vast collection of love, classic, oldies and modern-day hits.

The musicians, who make up Talento, are:

Prabuddha Geetharuchi:

Geilee Fonseka: Dynamic and charismatic vocalist

Prabuddha Geetharuchi: The main man behind the band Talento

(Vocalist/ Frontman). He is an avid music enthusiast and was mentored by a lot of famous musicians, and trainers, since he was a child. Growing up with them influenced him to take on western songs, as well as other music styles. A Peterite, he is the main man behind the band Talento and is a versatile singer/entertainer who never fails to get the crowd going.

Geilee Fonseka (Vocals):

A dynamic and charismatic vocalist whose vibrant stage presence, and powerful voice, bring a fresh spark to every performance. Young, energetic, and musically refined, she is an artiste who effortlessly blends passion with precision – captivating audiences from the very first note. Blessed with an immense vocal range, Geilee is a truly versatile singer, confidently delivering Western and Eastern music across multiple languages and genres.

Chandana Perera (Drummer):

His expertise and exceptional skills have earned him recognition as one of the finest acoustic drummers in Sri Lanka. With over 40 tours under his belt, Chandana has demonstrated his dedication and passion for music, embodying the essential role of a drummer as the heartbeat of any band.

Harsha Soysa:

(Bassist/Vocalist). He a chorister of the western choir of St. Sebastian’s College, Moratuwa, who began his musical education under famous voice trainers, as well as bass guitar trainers in Sri Lanka. He has also performed at events overseas. He acts as the second singer of the band

Udara Jayakody:

(Keyboardist). He is also a qualified pianist, adding technical flavour to Talento’s music. His singing and harmonising skills are an extra asset to the band. From his childhood he has been a part of a number of orchestras as a pianist. He has also previously performed with several famous western bands.

Aruna Madushanka:

(Saxophonist). His proficiciency in playing various instruments, including the saxophone, soprano saxophone, and western flute, showcases his versatility as a musician, and his musical repertoire is further enhanced by his remarkable singing ability.

Prashan Pramuditha:

(Lead guitar). He has the ability to play different styles, both oriental and western music, and he also creates unique tones and patterns with the guitar..

Features

Special milestone for JJ Twins

Published

24 mins ago

2026/03/3

Thilina Walpola

Twin brothers Julian and Jason Prins

The JJ Twins, the Sri Lankan musical duo, performing in the Maldives, and known for blending R&B, Hip Hop, and Sri Lankan rhythms, thereby creating a unique sound, have come out with a brand-new single ‘Me Mawathe.’

In fact, it’s a very special milestone for the twin brothers, Julian and Jason Prins, as ‘Me Mawathe’ is their first ever Sinhala song!

‘Me Mawathe’ showcases a fresh new sound, while staying true to the signature harmony and emotion that their fans love.

This heartfelt track captures the beauty of love, journey, and connection, brought to life through powerful vocals and captivating melodies.

It marks an exciting new chapter for the JJ Twins as they expand their musical journey and connect with audiences in a whole new way.

Their recent album, ‘CONCLUDED,’ explores themes of love, heartbreak, and healing, and include hits like ‘Can’t Get You Off My Mind’ and ‘You Left Me Here to Die’ which showcase their emotional intensity.

Readers could stay connected and follow JJ Twins on social media for exclusive updates, behind-the-scenes moments, and upcoming releases:

Instagram: http://instagram.com/jjtwinsofficial

TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@jjtwinsmusic

Facebook: http://facebook.com/jjtwinssingers

YouTube: http://youtube.com/jjtwins