• Nationalization by stealth

    Oct 30

    The current Sri Lankan government made it clear from the start that it was opposed to the privatization of government owned enterprises. “The policy of the government was to retain ownership and management of ‘strategic’ enterprises such as state banks, electricity and utilities and make them profitable”, reported the Sunday Times, commenting on the government stance.

    That making public enterprises profitable has been a difficult – if not impossible – task in the past has not stopped the government trying. As the Sunday Times report noted, “losses in public enterprises reached a record level last year and this year’s losses are likely to be larger”. But now the government has extended the policy further, moving from holding on to state enterprises to actively acquiring (privatizing) other ‘strategic’ enterprises to ‘manage them in the national interest’.

  • Shell quits Sri Lanka gas business amid state price control

    Sri Lanka’s government is buying back Royal Dutch Shell's stake in the part privatized gas company, Shell Gas Lanka. Shell’s decision to sell follows long running quarrels with the Government over the price at which the company could sell gas in the country. The $63 million sale returns the LP gas business in Sri Lanka to 100% state ownership.

    President Mahinda Rajapakse’s populist government had been at loggerheads with the oil and gas giant over the price at which gas is sold: the government has been insisting gas be sold at less than international market prices.

  • Corrupt or not?
    Transparency International (TI) has released its report for 2010. With a score of 3.2 points Sri Lanka is ranked 91 out of 178 countries, up from 97th position last year. Of interest is how the news was reported.
  • Profiting from Northeast disinvestment

    The Sri Lankan mobile operator Dialog Axiata made a net profit of 1.69 billion rupees in the September 2010 quarter compared with a loss of 439 million rupees a year ago, Lanka Business Online reported.  While this was partially due to cost cutting, the main driver was a huge increase in sales (16.2% or 10.56

  • PR and development

    Sri Lanka’s fees for UK public relations firm Bell Pottinger (£3m) is greater than the amount pledged for development in Jaffna (£2.85m), the Sri Lanka Guardian reported today. The amount pledged for Jaffna, moreover, is uncertain to be followed through.

  • Stocks: foreign investors sell, state buys

    Whilst Sri Lanka makes much of Colombo’s soaring stock market, trading figures show foreign investors are systematically exiting the island's market. Foreign investors have so far this year sold a net 23 billion rupees' ($200m) worth of shares, Reuters reported Monday.

  • Watts passes to Indian group
    An Indian conglomerate has  completed the acquisition of Watts Lanka PvT, a solid industrial tyres manufacturing company in Sri Lanka owned by European partners, trade press reported. Sun Tyre & Wheel Systems, part of the $6 billion TVS Group of India bought Watts Lanka (which will be renamed shortly), which was a joint venture between Watts Tyres Limited of Britain and KVK Invest JSC of Bulgaria.
  • Sri Lanka's military budget is 100 times that of resettlement

    A year and a half since declaring victory over the Liberation Tigers, Sri Lanka’s proposed military expenditure for next year (almost $2bn) is an increase of 20% over 2009's and will dwarf the proposed budget for resettlement ($16m).

  • Problem in Houston
  • Bye bye undies?
    The Sri Lankan government is  apparently abandoning the garment sector if press reports pver the weekend are to be believed. Given that the EU has withdrawn its GSP+ concession and the US is investigating its version of GSP, this is perhaps just the government accepting that garments are going to be hard to sell if the country's human rights record is not improved.
  • Friends in deed?
    The UN panel investigating Sri Lanka has finally begun its work. The ‘soft launch’ of its work has been noted elsewhere. Noteworthy for Tamils is that while the panel will look into “modalities, applicable international standards and comparative experience with regard to accountability processes” it is “not an investigative or fact-finding body”.
  • Eighteenth amendment negates the 'wait for change' argument

    The Sri Lankan parliament has passed the eighteenth amendment, which removes the two term limit on a President and transfers to the President the power to appoint individuals to commissions that, prior to the amendment, had been intended as quasi-independent bodies. Though the amendment itself has nothing to do with the ethnic question (and it is deliberately intended not to address that issue) it has consequences for those seeking a just solution to the island’s protracted problem that have to be acknowledged. A full list of the changes contained in the eighteenth amendment can be accessed from other places (see for instance http://www.groundviews.org/2010/09/02/the-18th-amendment-to-the-constit…) and numerous analysts and observers have commented on why this is a regressive step for the Sri Lankan polity in general (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAT8WpN72NY), so this article will not look at those, but rather focus on the effects on this constitutional change on the ethnic question. 

    The most significant alteration introduced by the amendment is the change to Article 31 of the Sri Lankan Constitution, which sets the two-term limit on all Presidents. While others have focused on the possibility of authoritarianism as a result of the incumbent being reelected continuously – which is no insignificant matter – this also has practical consequences for the ethnic question and how other players (such as the Sinhalese public, the Tamil population, the Diaspora, the international community, etc) deal with Sri Lanka in the future. For by removing the 12 year maximum limit for any single President, this amendment makes the current President and his government a ‘fact of the ground’ that has to be dealt with.

  • Rajapaksa's alternative reality

    The Sri Lankan government is  apparently abandoning the garment sector if press reports over the weekend are to be believed. Given that the EU has withdrawn its GSP+ concession and the US is investigating its version of GSP, this is perhaps just the government accepting that garments are going to be hard to sell if the country's human rights record is not improved.

  • TNA's well-meaning folly
    The TNA is undermining the Tamil nation's calls for an independent inquiry
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