Echelon Magazine - December 2023

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Turning Point
After everything we've endured over the last four years, the 2023 year-end festive season began propitiously with the Paris Club, an informal group of 23 official creditors, agreeing in principle to restructure $5.6 billion in debt, following separate agreements with India for $1.4 billion and China $5 billion.
Finalizing these creditor agreements and implementing the IMF-mandated reforms, including new fiscal and revenue laws to bolster financial management and revenue collection and public sector reforms, should be a national priority. Successful debt restructuring is crucial not just to access a further $2.9 billion from the IMF's recovery package approved in September 2023 but to restore our credibility (and currency) in the global economy.
Ominously, elections loom over the horizon: that is when we undo ourselves. There is little doubt that Sri Lanka is at a turning point, but three challenges continue to confront and confound us when we line up at the ballot box.
First, in negotiating the terms of the debt restructuring, we need to ensure fair terms that encourage fiscal independence and development goals, steering clear of damaging conditions like excessive austerity or giving in to the unreasonable demands of unproductive segments of the economy. Second, transparency and cooperation are crucial: we must honour our commitments to preserve trust with creditors and citizens. Third, restructuring should be an opportunity to reform economic management, focusing on systemic problems such as low revenue and high spending. Long-term, comprehensive reforms are essential over short-term fixes, the one thing we gladly overlook when casting our vote.

Echelon Magazine Description:

Intelligent Storytelling

The one thing that will define the Echelon magazine will be the quality of the storytelling. Echelon,published monthly, will cover in depth Sri Lanka’s most successful businesses, examine their winning strategiesand profile their leaders in immersive stories. Great stories are also never limited to words, and our approach includes rich photography, bold graphics and leading edge design which together will make for a compelling read.

But business doesn’t start and end in a boardroom;it extends to the golf club greens, to international travel and to pursuits that blurthe lines between commercial venture and sheer passion. The Echelon team will present the best in business and lifestyle coverage that will appeal to an exclusive and affluent readership: an otherwise hard to reach demographic.

Content will be developed by one of the most experienced and proven teams of editors, financial journalists, photographers and designers in the country.This team has already raised the bar for powerful and expertly crafted business news. Shamindra Kulamannage, will lead the editorial team.

The reputation of Echelon is being built on the separation between editorial and advertising. However we are also looking for the most creative and impactful new formats that can be applied in our magazines, iPad app as well as website to help our clients reach our audience. We are flexible and creative and we will have a solution for every single advertiser who wants to reach our audience.

We are passionate about creative results and about working with our advertisers to help them create bespoke multi platform creative solutions with our in house creative team and of course our sales team.

Echelon will be a great place to show off the products and capabilities of our clients because they will be surrounded by an editorial product that is expertly crafted, full of integrity and intelligence.