By Shanika Sriyananda/DailyFT
Colombo, November 7: The National People’s Power (NPP) Government under the leadership of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake would not engage in anything that would deteriorate hopes of people because the NPP was built on hope and it was a created by people, NPP’s candidate for Colombo district Chathuranga Abeysinghe, who is likely to be a key member of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s cabinet, said.
“We have carefully drawn plans with the support of experts in the respective fields and this Government is not going to fall as Opposition political parties predict,” he told Daily FT.
He talked about a wide range of issues including the progress of discussions with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and NPP’s future plans to bring sweeping changes to bring the expected change for the country that they promised for the people before the NPP came into power.
“We are on a winning trajectory and we are progressing with discussions with the IMF while ensuring that the citizens of this country are less impacted through the actions of the Government,” he added.
Abeysinghe, a data science and analytics consultant, said that previous governments were not willing to use technology like digitising State administrative systems because technology mainly brings transparency and efficiency. Following are excerpts of the interview.
Q: The Government is just a few weeks old. What are the main challenges ahead of it? Don’t you think that people have given you a daunting task for a complete change of this country?
When people had expectations for a system change, we knew that the NPP was the solution and the only alternative. Therefore, we were getting ready for this. We designed our goal for a change over the last eight years and formulated plans on how NPP will rule the country, what policies we are to bring in, how to implement those and even how to get support internationally, especially from India, China and other countries. All those were planned well. Now it is time to execute our plans but it is a huge task.
The biggest challenge that we are facing is economic instability. We were given a country which was broken financially. Therefore, making it stable is our first priority before we make other changes. Secondly, we want to create an efficient State sector coupled with technology. The Government is putting in a lot of energy bringing technological changes to the State sector.
We also have other priorities like improving production while ensuring that basic needs of the people are fulfilled. The growth pace is the next challenge. We need to have a growth rate beyond six% and we have to keep improving our exports beyond 20% a year for us to have a stabilised economy.
The NPP also has a methodical plan to bring effective changes in health, education, transportation, agriculture, transportation, etc.
Q: While President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and NPPers are confident of a strong Government, the opposite political parties predict that this Government will last only for a short period of time. Your comments?
I think any Opposition will hope for it. But anybody who was hoping for a change in this country, not in their wildest dream would expect or wish for another collapse. I do not want to comment on their sentiments but we are very confident on two things. One is we do have a plan and this Government is not going to fall. We can see the progression that we made within the last few months with the commendations of the international community, stock market and exchange rate are stabilising. Therefore, we are very confident to continue with more investments coming in and credit rating to be up in the first quarter of next year.
The NPP Government will not be engaged in anything that will deteriorate the hopes of people because the NPP is built on hope and people have created this Government. Therefore, the NPP has necessary capabilities and willpower to ensure Sri Lanka reaches its expectations.
The Opposition should wait about 15 to 20 years to rebuild the country to bring something better than the NPP, better people and better policies. I think the Opposition is already in shambles because the way they did politics is over as people are looking for new politics. That new politics only exists with the NPP at this point.
Q: The performances of some senior officials, including the Central Bank Governor and Treasury Secretary who were with the previous Government were criticised at your pre-Presidential election stages but they still hold the same posts. Why and will they be changed after the General Election?
They are Government officials and especially these two officials still have roles to play in the administrative process. Basically, a particular role and decisions are based on the then Governments, sentiments and political vision. What happened during the last two years due to destabilisation and after the economic crisis, the then Government had taken certain decisions which were detrimental to the people. For example, the local debt restructuring process.
The SME sector collapsed. These decisions were highly criticised and obviously the officials who took those decisions and executed them are at blame. But we are counting on their experience.
The new Government is giving them proper direction and support. As long as they are aligned with party principles and policies, they can continue with their given tasks. We do not want to take revenge or take action just because the previous collective decisions were wrong and we know that these decisions are socio, political and economic decisions and no one person can make it.
What we have now ensured is that we are giving proper direction as the Government and if those officials are willing to make this change for the country, the opportunity is given because they are experienced Government officials. Rather than shaking the card at this point, our main goal is restoring the country’s stability. If the team who was there willing to work with the new Government to ensure a very strong outcome, we would allow them to continue their work because the NPP came into power not to take revenge or to appoint our own people but to stabilise and bring prosperity to the country.
However, the actions and decisions of these officials will be very much politically reviewed and understood so there will be close negotiations, understanding, and collaboration with the Central Bank (CB) to go forward. Now the CB is an independent body from an Act and the fiscal strategies are separate. The co-existence is what is going to make Sri Lanka better. We are giving the positive signal, therefore the officials can also take it positively.
Q: Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which is the backbone of the economy, are facing many difficulties and challenges since 2019 due to severe economic crises. Many have lost their lives due to financial burdens and they are still facing a serious complex situation due to certain ad hoc measures taken by previous governments. What kind of support can this sector expect under the NPP Government?
The SME sector accounts for 53% and it is not good for the economy. If you are a developed economy and have equal opportunities for people to do business, the SME sector would reach more than 85% of the GDB. It is very unfortunate to understand Sri Lanka’s SME sector is falling apart. Without having a proper plan, the previous Government purposely shrunk our economy and reduced consumption, which impacted the SME sector a lot. In terms of financing the Sri Lankan SME sector never had a development bank or long-term financing with low interest rates. They had to borrow from the private sector banks and these institutions are now trying to take over the assets which are pushing the SME sector owners out of the business. Over 125 have committed suicide. Even though the Parate law execution was postponed to this December, the problem is huge.
The NPP is the only political party that is providing practical solutions for this current situation. Every country is going through a crisis and making their SME sector vulnerable. From 2019 till now Sri Lanka is in a crisis situation and we never had a program that supported SMEs in terms of managing their loans with commercial banks.
As the NPP we have proposed to establish a relief bank where that bank would take the non-performing loans from commercial banks and ensure that commercial banks’ balance sheets are also cleared as well as the SMEs sector also continue their businesses moving out of the crib and ensuring their assets are not taken over. This is a complex situation but we are very much willing to find a solution together with the banking sector and SME sector.
While dealing with the current situation, It is important to implement a proper mechanism and strategy to support small and medium businesses, which will be provided with required data, market size and also what kind of businesses that will yield results. In Sri Lanka 65% of SMEs fail within three years due to various reasons and one main reason is lack of knowledge about the market while financing is also a major problem in the SME sector. At present SMEs have to go to commercial banks and provide collateral to find their startup funding.
Among the support that the NPP Government is to provide to the SME sector is by establishing a banking system, which will allow the SMEs to get collateral free loans based on their feasibilities, providing professional knowledge to give them financial, marketing, technological and HR skills to improve their businesses, and also supporting market access. We also plan to establish a long-term financing mechanism, which will be a development bank to support SMEs.
Q: Still negotiations with the IMF are going on with their reviews and some have doubts that Sri Lanka will not get the remaining portion of the loan. What is really going on with regard to IMF talks?
Even before the Presidential Election we were having a good dialogue with the IMF. This is why we have clearly said in our manifesto that we will continue our dialogue with the IMF. The NPP clearly communicated with the IMF and confirmed that we were willing to abide by the thresholds of the IMF. The primary balance and debt servicing ratio, which are fine because that is good for the country and we would come up with an alternative way of achieving it. That has been negotiated since the new Government was formed.
At the moment, our team is in New York discussing with the IMF officials and it records a positive progress. They will start the review fast. The changes that the NPP wants to make for the people will be reflected in the next Budget. We are on a winning trajectory and we are progressing while ensuring that the citizens of this country are less impacted through the actions of the Government.
It is taken positively and proceeding with whatever is agreed. There is a positive sign that everything will fall in place for us to get the credit rating by the QR.
Q: As you said recovery of the present economic crisis is one of the key areas that the Government has to seriously look into after giving all promises before the Presidential Election. Do you have better plans like implementing national plans with priorities compared to other political parties?
We identified this need in 2016 and the NPP started building policies. It is the only political party which presented policies similar to national policies in 2019. We have comprehensive 38 policies for identified 38 areas that need to be improved. This includes national security, education, economic transformation, health, transportation, agriculture, arts and culture, etc., which are included in our manifesto. We have now collaborated with sector experts and the Government officials to make them national policies, which were party policies a month ago.
Every citizen has a right to contribute in shaping these national policies. We will introduce them soon then whoever becomes the Minister, he or she can not include their own vision to these policies. These policies have been endorsed as policies on how the country can move forward and the entire Cabinet has to follow these national policies.
Historically, we have seen how ministers change national plans according to their whims and fancies. This resulted in putting the country into chaos over the years and making Sri Lanka indebted. The debt issue was mainly because ministers were getting approval from the Cabinet. The NPP wants to end this and wants to hold to national plans in decision making. The National Planning Unit will be strengthened so that every proposal has to go through this unit which will be reviewed for their importance, feasibility and whether they are connecting other relevant areas. Therefore, national policies will be guide books for Sri Lanka to move forward. Bringing in national policies is the request and pledge that we have been presenting over the last five to 10 years.
Q: How do you expect to have economic stability through investor-friendly initiatives? Once you said that several new investments are being negotiated and discussed and how confident are you that they all will come to invest in Sri Lanka because there are still some bottlenecks that hinder them from coming to invest here. What are the measures proposed by the NPP to clear them?
Policy inconsistency is the main reason that Sri Lanka could not attract foreign investments. The investor who wants to invest in the country wants to see that particular area of investment has a future and strong plan and a progression in that area of investment. For example, Sri Lanka’s apparel industry doesn’t have a national strategy for a person to invest. The Government will take measures to give them our expected goals clearly in our policies so investors now have visibility where they should invest. This will give them a clear idea on the Government’s priority areas of investment opportunities. In future there will be no space for the investors to invest in any area of their choice and later claim that the Government is not supporting.
Second lapse is bureaucracy. When investors come here, they have to get approval from the Board of Investment (BOI) and to get the rest of the approvals they have to run around departments and also offer bribes. It is the red tape and bureaucracy that hinders a country to grow. This will be avoided by establishing a one – stop- shop where the investors come and the Government will take the responsibility of providing them all other approvals to fast track the implementation.
If the average set up time takes two to three years, nobody is going to do investment in Sri Lanka. These bottlenecks will be changed effectively to enable million dollars of investments to come.
Q: Establishing ‘one-stop-shop’ has been talked about by several governments but nothing happened. How fast will this be set up?
The Government is looking at changing the organisational structure because at this time some investments are nobody’s baby and some investments are everybody’s baby. Under new changes, we will take care of the investors from the point that they landed in the country. The individual politicians became powerful and they held their own ministries and when investors wanted to get things done they had to know the minister concerned or some other minister to influence the other minister. There was no collective decision making in the Cabinet in order to support approving investments because every minister was competing with each other.
In our Cabinet, there will be a collective team like board members who are experts in various areas and are working for a common goal. If some proposals come to the Cabinet, everybody is responsible and accountable for not only approving but also implementing those investment proposals. The bottlenecks will be cleared when the Cabinet is working together and the entire set up including the ministries and their staff are working together.
Q: It is said the Government is aiming at digitising the entire administration process in the country – a much talked about area of development under previous governments. Will it not only be a slogan under your Government?
The digitisation is a no-brainer for a State because many countries which started to have succeeded as nations started digitising their government services as early as 1990. Some transformed during the last two decades. The previous governments were not willing to use technology because technology mainly brings transparency and efficiency. This is detrimental to the previous political culture because if you are running on corruption and if you want to allow bottlenecks and if you want to make things difficult to people, bringing new technology defers the purpose. That is the main purpose and reason that it never happened. And for us mainly for the NPP’s existence or for the growth digitisation is a must and a top priority.
The reality is digitising every sector cannot be done overnight. Therefore, our priority projects are issuing digital IDs, which we have been talking about for years, and other key areas like digitising Sri Lanka Customs, Department of Inland Revenue and Land Registrar Department. The Government digitisation process will be five to 10 years but we can see the initial progress within the first six months to one year. The entire South Korea’s government was digitised and it took 10 years. They started in 1991 and we are too late.
Q: The NPP was vehemently voiced against family members doing politics but there are some NPP candidates whose family members are in the NPP including you contesting in the forthcoming elections. How do you respond to this allegation?
The entire society was against nepotism in terms of political power where the father’s political power, wealth and political networks were transferred to their sons or a family member to continue that political legacy. But in our party, we have fathers and sons, husbands and wives work in the party in the roles given by the party. As individuals we do not have power but as a team, we have power. My father, Dr. Nihal Abeysinghe, entered into politics when he was in the university and again joined after his retirement as a Government servant. In the NPP, he is engaged in politics based on the role given to him by the party as its General Secretary. He built the national intellectual organisation and is contesting from Kalutara at the forthcoming elections.
Similarly, I joined the NPP in 2018 and it has nothing to do with my father being there. As my own merits and party’s request I am contesting from Kotte for the Colombo district. This is not what we wanted as the Abeysinghe family but purely on my merit and also because the party thinks I can be a part of the transformation process with my capabilities and skills. We are two individuals trying to make a change and the NP is allowing us to do that change.
Kotte, which is a diverse and complex electorate, has the poorest people as well as the country’s richest people. I mainly want to find solutions for children and youth who are vulnerable to drugs. It is my top priority among other concerns like improving health and education.
END
