UNP says people are suffering due to Govt.’s inequitable economic policies

The main Opposition UNP yesterday charged that people are suffering due to the inequitable economic policies of the Government.

The UNP said that the Central Bank has stated in its latest monetary policy review that “The policy measures adopted by the Central Bank and the Government during the period February to April 2012 to curtail the growth of credit, reduce import demand and thereby stabilise the external sector have begun to have an effect on the relevant variables.”

However, UNP MP Dr. Harsha De Silva in a statement said: “What it ought to have said is that ‘having completely mismanaged the external sector’ the policy measures ‘forced’ on the Central Bank by prudent economists, both locally and internationally, have now begun to have an effect.”

 

Following is the rest of the statement of Dr. De Silva:

The UNP having introduced the market economy to Sri Lanka has continued to appeal for just and equitable economic policies that provide economic freedom to people to work hard and create wealth in an appropriately regulated market economy.

We have always favoured and continue to push for policies that help markets develop instead of disrupting well-functioning markets.  When the Central Bank embarked on a journey to dictate to markets with artificial interest rates and exchange rates that was going to end with nothing but a crash landing that would significantly increase the economic burdens on the people we were critical of those policies.

In fact the UNP was absolutely clear that the attempt by the politicized Central Bank to peg the Sri Lanka Rupee at 114 to the US Dollar was doomed.  Responding to the Governor on the launch of the 2012 Monetary Policy Roadmap in a statement on 3 January 2012 titled ‘Nauseatingly one-sided propaganda,’ we said the plan did not address the major external sector challenges the country was facing and that the eventual scenarios for exchange rates and interest rates given the certain failure of their strategy was never revealed.

We ended cynically that the three words ‘balance of payments’ which was absolutely the most important issue of the day was not even mentioned in the roadmap presentation and thus it was like staging Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.

Even though we are personally attacked by a few powerful individuals for standing-up against such inequitable economic policies and grand corruption, we know that the nation is fully appreciative of the services we are rendering as the opposition.

The groundswell building across the nation is a clear indication that people of all walks of life are tired of the crony capitalism and are looking for a better team to manage the economy so that they can reap the dividends of peace.

Until we form the next Government, the UNP will continue to fight for the economic rights of the people so that we will hear fewer stories like the one last week where 28-year old Gintota Vidanage Samanthi of Devinuwarahad attempted to take her life along with her three children by jumping into the Nilvala River due to absolute poverty.