Professional Documents
Culture Documents
2016
by Raisa Wickrematunge
- on 11/27/2015
In the wake of the Budget being presented in
Parliament, Groundviews spoke to several people, including economists,
trade union representatives and government officials, on their thoughts
from positives to reservations.
Senior Economist Hayleys Group Deshal de Mel said that the 2016 budget
introduced some very progressive measures which went some way towards
the structural reforms necessary to drive the Sri Lankan economy forward.
The proposed investment in education, particularly in IT, science facilities
and most importantly teacher training, are crucial. It is essential that Sri
Lanka progresses towards a comprehensive overhaul of school curricula to
such as making provision for life insurance worth Rs. 1 million. However,
the budget could have done more to provide for fishermen, including social
security measures for fishing gear. In addition, Kumara said there needed to
be a mechanism to ensure that vessels abided by international regulations.
Currently some fishermen, notably the Chinese, were straying into
international waters flying the Sri Lankan flag, and flouting maritime law.
Deep sea fishing is in danger thanks to practices like this. At the same
time, we should have the capacity to grant Sri Lankan fishermen licenses to
go into international waters. Of course not much can happen within a year,
but we hope they will take this up strongly in the future, he said. President
of the Lanka Private Bus Owners Association (LPBOA) WMGR Wijerathne
said that he was still in the process of studying the budget in detail.
However, he said that to his knowledge, there had been no definite
proposal made on public transport, which was unfortunate.
Meanwhile, Chief Economist, Ceylon Chamber of Commerce Anushka
Wijesinha also said that Budget 2016 had hit many of the right notes,
particularly in terms of the private sector and had even managed a certain
amount of consistency with the Prime Ministers policy statement. While
some might argue that the reforms werent drastic enough, so that
underlying structural issues had yet to be addressed, it had to be noted
that the political realities of a unity government had to be accounted for, he
added.
Overall, much had been done to encourage foreign and domestic
investment.
The Government had gone beyond the usual concessionary loan strategy
with the micro and SME segment, while there were also several key reforms
made on education that would help enhance the quality of Sri Lankas
workforce. Similarly, the agriculture sector too saw some interesting
was being used on pet political projects. A spirit of transparency and good
governance was important, he added.
The need of the hour was strong implementation to ensure these ambitious
proposals were adhered to, Anushka said.
While there were many concerns raised, the overall attitude among those
interviewed was one of cautious optimism, with most noting key avenues
for growth. Yet the focus on indirect taxation and revenue sources remained
areas for concern.
Posted by Thavam