GETTING BACK TO PRE-COVID-19 CHAOS

ECONOMIC “PAINKILLERS” NO REMEDY FOR ECONOMIC BANKRUPTCY

- Kusal Perera

Sri Lanka is often spoken of as one of the worst affected countries economically from the COVID-19 pandemic. Fitch Ratings last November made it look worse. COVID-19 did affect the economy no doubt with lockdowns and isolations over almost nine months last year and still continuing. But we were no better even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Pre-pandemic Sri Lanka is one major fact that is not brought into discussion when getting “back to normalcy” is spoken about.

“Economists and Financial experts” with high profile designations continue to publicly advise the government on how the economy could be pulled out of the rut. They stress on the need to provide more incentives for “foreign direct investments” (FDI). Need to leverage private investments for infrastructure development and perhaps introduce import controls only on short term basis till the economy picks up. Most believe, “tourism” should have priority attention. They also compromise on money printing to set aside local debt. International Reserves, Sovereign debt, GDP, inflation is among other terms thrown into the fray.

This is about the “old normalcy” that has more ills than cures. This was when we were wholly dependent on FDIs and export manufacture to the global market. When we were part of the global market economy tragedies like Carbon dioxide emissions, climate change, global warming and growing disparity between the global rich and the poor. In our own context massive deforestation, regular landslides, floods, increasing socio-economic disparity, growing corruption and crimes in society are extensions of global tragedies on our free-market economy.