Sajith or any other person cannot change debt restructuring agreements signed by SL Govt – Minister Dr. Bandula
Minister of Transport, Highways and Mass Media, Dr. Bandula Gunawardhana joined a series of programmes to start the development of several severely dilapidated roads in the Gampola area and to handover the carpet laid road projects that were developed into the ownership of the people.
Under this programme, at the request of Justice, Prison Affairs and Constitutional Reform, State Minister Anuradha Jayaratne, the Gampola – Pupurassa, Hunugala Main road which was carpeted and developed under the 1,500 km road renovation project, was handed over to the people by Transport Minister Dr. Bandula Gunawardhana. Also, the construction work of the Hindagala – Narangvita – Gampola road was also started under the leadership of Minister Dr. Bandula Gunawardhana.
Speaking on the occasion, Minister Gunawardhana said:
“We are passing through a very difficult period in history. After independence, various governments of our country maintained a huge deficit in the budget to maintain a large welfare oriented economy based on the demands of the people. To cover this deficit, each government has taken huge loans both domestically and from abroad.
Also, instead of producing and exporting many things that the country needs, we have imported a large number of goods from foreign countries. Due to the lack of sufficient export income to cover import expenses, Sri Lanka is daily getting into more debts to foreign countries. Another loan has been taken to pay one loan. When that is not enough, they have continued to print money and fulfil public demands.
When the protestors and agitators are protesting in various places and presenting their demands, the governments have printed more and more money by presenting supplementary estimates. As a result, the price of goods has increased day by day to the extent that it cannot be sustained by spending a large amount of money on a small amount of goods. Then again and again requests are made to increase the salaries. Then money is printed again and wages are increased.
Faced in this situation, the economy of Sri Lanka, which has a very small economy, was completely shut down due to the Covid pandemic that occurred after the Easter attack. We couldn’t pay instalments of foreign loans taken. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had quietly understood that by continuing to do this, a huge debt burden would accumulate and if solutions were not found, the country would collapse completely. It was not possible to find any political leader, economic expert or other scholar in the country who could provide a solution to it. After a call for proposals to find an international level expert who could offer solutions to that situation, the French Lazard company was selected by a Cabinet subcommittee. Clifford Chance international law firm was entrusted with appearing in legal proceedings.
At that time, when all experienced leaders refused to take over the country, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who had held the position of Prime Minister of the country five times, accepted this challenge. An agreement was reached with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) until 2027. The country got the ability to breathe through that. So far, the rate of increase in commodity prices has decreased by more than 5 percent. The amount of international assets has grown to 5.5. International trust has been established in the way that anyone can now import goods from abroad” the Minister said.
Kushan Devinda, Chairman of the State Development and Design Legal Corporation, Mahendran Wijepala, Director of Road Development Authority Central Province, officials, former Local Government representatives, government officials, local residents and many other people attended this event.
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