The country has gone bankrupt due to shortages of fuel, electricity and essential commodities as there were no dollars, said SJB MP Eran Wickremaratne.
Addressing the media at the Economic Policy Centre at the Office of the Leader of the Opposition, in Colombo, the Member of Parliament also stated as follows: When there is no war or terrorism in the country, there are long queues at petrol stations without diesel. The Central Bank does not have the dollars to bring in fuel from vessels anchored outside the port. But the Central Bank governor is saying there is no shortage of dollars in the country is an irony.
Also, people are suffering from not being able to buy gas, milk powder, wheat flour and other essential commodities. In addition, there has never been a crisis in the history of independent Sri Lanka where people have been left without electricity, for want of diesel to run power plants.
Meanwhile, education of schoolchildren may be disrupted as no arrangements have yet been made to refuel the more than 30,000 school vans and buses carrying children during the second school term starting on the 7th. This is another blow to school education, already affected by Covid-19
Since the government does not have dollars, oil is purchased on a reloading process. Now the country is bankrupt as there is now a dollar shortage event to buy on a reload system.
The Opposition realised from the beginning that this government, which is greedier for power than the country, has no solution to these problems.
Therefore, even though the Opposition told the government to give priority to spending foreign reserves to meet the country’s needs, instead of using it for debt repayments, the government’s priority was to repay the debts on time to its allies who had bought the international sovereign bonds in the secondary market.
Now a situation has arisen where investors do not come forward to buy our international sovereign bonds.
Under this backdrop, the macroeconomic system has become unmanageable and weakening the banking system, and making it vulnerable to external economic pressures as a country.
Wickremaratne stressed that those who are responsible for the collapse of the country’s economic icons, the Central Bank, and the Ministry of Finance, should be removed from their posts and sent home.
“The Central Bank officials instead of discharging their responsibilities of maintaining inflation and financial stability are engaged in having discussions on how to counter the Opposition views on economy.” he said
He added that instead of the influx of foreign investors, due to the current economic situation in Sri Lanka, there is a tendency for local investors to shift their investments to other countries.
He said it was unfortunate that Sri Lankan investors, engaged in the tourism sector, have now shifted their investments to the Maldives as the country did not see any improvement in the aftermath of the Corona epidemic.
The government, which tried to hide behind the corona about the bankruptcy of the country’s economy, is now making use of the Russian war for the same.
There is no response from the responsible parties of the government to the present economic crises. The Minister of Finance does not even come to Parliament to answer questions raised by the Opposition in Parliament.
When asked why he was not coming, it was said that he was preparing to go to India, but it is reported that Basil Rajapaksa has been informed by India not to undertake the visit to India at the moment.
Wickremaratne stressed that the government should give priority to meeting the needs of the people, even by delaying or restructuring the debt-repayment in order to rebuild the country, which was in crisis due to government giving prominence to settle the ISBs which is reported to have been purchased by its cronies in the secondary market aimed at 100 percent profit.
