Echelon Magazine - January 2021

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The beast awakens

The Coronavirus pandemic is forcing a rethink about how we live, how we work, and how to run an economy. When governments chose to shut down businesses and limit people’s movement to contain the spread of the deadly pandemic, they also had to contend with lower tax revenues, businesses going bust, and people losing their jobs.

Now, in the wreckage left behind by the pandemic, governments are scrambling to introduce stimulus packages to get companies back into businesses, to create jobs, and restore tax income. However, funding the stimulus has led to a record amount of debt being added.

Global debt across all sectors rose by over $10 trillion in 2019 topping $255 trillion. This includes debt outstanding by governments, businesses and households. At over 322% of GDP, global debt is now 40% higher than at the onset of the 2008 great recession.

For Sri Lanka, with its large foreign debt to repay in the next few years, the choices have been stark. Compared to about four billion rupees of net money printing in 2019, Sri Lanka’s central bank unleashed a flood of about 800 billion in printed money in 2020. All this liquidity may not be without consequences in countries like Sri Lanka, running large budget deficits financed by printed money, and also converting existing debt rollovers, unsold at the auction, to printed money.

For those believing in orthodoxy, in which governments must eventually pay for their spending through higher taxes or the population must be willing to put up with inflation (another form of tax), apprehensions will now abound.

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.