Basil’s justification not valid claims UNP MP Dr. de Silva

UNP MP and party’s chief spokesman on the economy Dr. Harsha de Silva yesterday charged that Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa’s justification for the Revival Bill was not valid.

In a statement Dr. de Silva said Minister of Economic Development Basil Rajapaksa is going to great lengths to justify the urgent enactment of the Revival of Underperforming Enterprises and Underutilised Assets Act against the advice of a chorus of stakeholders. His argument is that there was nothing ‘urgent’ about the Bill and that the companies were warned a year ago by no less a person than the President of Sri Lanka. In one of his recent press interviews he says the expropriation Bill was “one of the main proposals in the President’s budget speech last November” and that “there were two references; one was to BOI factories and another to unutilised lands. This is the implementation.”

“It is with regret we have to point out Minister Rajapaksa is completely wrong and is falsifying what the President said,” UNP MP said.

With reference to BOI factories what the President said was “Further, despite having been approved, since many BOI investments are non-performing, I propose to cancel forthwith, all BOI approvals granted before 30 June 2010, if such investment has not commenced or has remained closed as of today.”  

Thus a number of BOI investments including Sevenagala Sugar, Pelwatte Sugar, Pelwatte Dairy, Sri Lanka Convention and Exhibition Centre among others cannot be classified as ‘non-performing’ and were not ‘closed as of today’, meaning 22 November 2010. In fact they were performing rather well and making a fair amount of profits. Further, there is no mention of expropriation in the budget speech, only that BOI approvals would be cancelled, in that BOI concessions would be revoked.

The second reference is to unutilised lands. Here again what the President said was “Since a large area of land under plantation companies remains unutilised, I propose to give a six months notice period for such companies to put unused lands in to productive use. If plantation companies do not comply with this deadline, such unutilised lands will be distributed among small holders for re-plantation.” Now in the case of Sevenagala and Pelwatte, they are not classified as plantation companies as in Agalawatte, Balangoda or Watawala, and even if it were no notice was given, let alone six months. In fact, not only the so-called unutilised lands but all lands were nationalised by the Expropriation Act. Further, while Minister Rajapaksa is silent on the President’s promise to distribute the land among ‘small holders’, market talk is that the expropriated land will be given to parties already selected by the Minister.  

“We are unaware if any of the regional plantation companies have been issued notice of expropriation yet, or when, they would arrive.  But certainly we do not believe last week's undemocratic asset seizure was a one-off act,” UNP MP De Silva said in his statement.