The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) yesterday urged the Government to make known to Parliament the success of the on-going tax amnesty via the Finance Act.

JVP Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake said the Government brought in the tax amnesty as one of the measures to boost foreign exchange inflows. 

“We don’t want to know who accepted the amnesty but tell us how much money has been declared,” he said in his address in Parliament on the serious foreign reserves crisis facing the country. 

Dissanayake said the Government pinned hopes of economic revival and easing of the foreign currency crisis with the appointment of Basil Rajapaksa as the Finance Minister, and later by getting Nivard Cabraal to be the Central Bank Governor. 

“However, despite these moves, the economy and the forex crisis has gone from bad to worse,” the JVP MP charged. 

He said that the country’s foreign reserves have plunged to $ 1.5 billion, exposing the serious crisis. This is, after in October, the Central Bank Governor expressed confidence in various ongoing and planned measures being successful to boost reserves to $ 3.5 billion. On the other hand, workers remittances have fallen by $ 1.2 billion so far in 2021. 

“The Finance Minister on Thursday warned of suspending import of milk powder and continuing the ban on import of vehicles. The current low reserves and some of these announcements all point to the crisis getting worse, leading to serious scarcity of essential food items, medicines and oil,” opined JVP MP.

 

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