Covered by The Island
Whatever Sri Lanka decides about dealing with its debt and paying its way through the world, the country needs to formulate a very good economic analysis and a publicly-backed plan that will establish the credibility of the world in its economy going forward, Dr. Nishan De Mel, Advocata Institute Advisor and Executive Director of Verité Research said recently.
He made this remark at a virtual forum called the Advokatha (Advoකතා) a weekly series conducted by the Advocata Institute on ‘How to Resolve Sri Lanka’s Debt Crisis Without Seeking Assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’.
The full discussion can be found on Advocata Plus YouTube Channel.
Further speaking he said:
“Such an analysis needs to be thorough and well-structured with the focus on the real economic activity and the financial conditions in the economy. That would be the first step to build credibility of the world about the Sri Lankan economy. It is actually credibility that we lack rather than foreign reserves. If we can build that credibility about us in the countries that we deal with, we may not need assistance from the IMF to resolve our liquidity issue. When such a favourable environment is created and other countries repose their trust in Sri Lanka’s economy, its sovereign credit ratings would see an upgrade and Sri Lanka would be able to raise funds at the international capital market at reasonable interest rates, The skill we need for this is to present an analysis and a plan and then demonstrate our commitment to stick to it. Our concern is whether the government has such a plan and if it does have one, why it is not publicized”.