Harsha exposes failings of 'Mahinda Darshanaya'

Thursday, 17 July 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By Waruni Paranagamage UNP MP Dr. Harsha de Silva yesterday fired a fresh salvo at the Government over claims of reducing the country’s indebtedness, saying this was not factual and it was under the Ranil Wickremesinghe “Darshanaya” in 2001 that the Fiscal Management Responsibility Act was implemented. “Although Higher Education Minister S.B. Dissanayake has said that bringing the debt to GDP ratio down to 65%, was a result of the ‘Mahinda Darshanaya,’ the truth is that it was ‘Ranil Darshanaya’ (Ranil’s vision),” said the UNP MP.

“In 2003, Ranil Wickremesinghe introduced the Fiscal Management Responsibility Act, in which it very clearly says that by 2013 the debt to GDP ratio must be brought down to 60%. The UNP Government at the time brought down the debt burden, so it was not the ‘Mahinda Darshanaya,’ it was the ‘Ranil Darshanaya,’” said De Silva. He further pointed out that President Rajapaksa amended the Act, wherein he delayed the requirement of bringing down the debt to GDP ratio to 60% from 2013 to 2020. “So the ‘Darshanaya’ has nothing to do with bringing down the debt to GDP ratio as Dissanayake says,” UNP MP De Silva added. Dr. De Silva also said that the claimed reduction in public debt under the Rajapaksa regime was insignificant in comparison to the period under Wickremesinghe’s premiership. He also said that Wickremesinghe took over the Government in 2001, public debt was about 130% of GDP due to bad economic management by the previous regime. “The other point is, public debt to GDP is decreasing because the Government is transferring the liabilities to banks such as NSB,” the UNP MP said in a media interaction outside the NSB Nawala branch. He said that due to terrible management, mismanagement and lending to political cronies and bad companies with negative net worth including SriLankan Airlines in 2013, NSB profits had fallen by 69%. NSB has borrowed $ 750 million, which the highest amount ever borrowed by the any bank in this country in a single exercise and at high cost, he charged. The UNP MP claimed that the Government action had endangered NSB, which had millions of accounts belonging to the lesser-privileged.