By Prof. Samitha Hettige SL’s super power neighbor India recently commissioned its first aircraft carrier Vikrant at a cost of 3 billion USD in Kerala. At the commissioning Indian Prime Minister has indicated that Indo Pacific region is a defense priority for India (Ref. Indian sources). Although analysts question the need for such carriers in…
Fitch Ratings-Hong Kong-02 September 2022: The IMF staff-level agreement with Sri Lanka on a USD2.9 billion programme, confirmed on 1 September, appears to signal a sharp change in policy settings in order to achieve macroeconomic stability, including through large fiscal adjustment, greater exchange-rate flexibility and more central bank autonomy, says Fitch Ratings. This should facilitate…
Business Sentiment Despite the protracted period of suffering in recent months, Sri Lankans are gradually reclaiming a sense of their previous existence as the interminable wait in long queues has dwindled to minutes rather than hours and days, and basic necessities are in higher supply. Thank goodness for that island mentality and short memories. Soon,…
Blunt policy tools, a far cry from the ‘social market economy’’ proposed by the President and reformers in the opposition. Extraordinary Gazette No 2294/30 of 23rd August 2022, issued under the Import and Export Control Act No 1 of 1969 by the Ministry of Finance temporarily suspends the importation of over 300 items. This move…
JACKSON HOLE, Wyo., Aug 29 (Reuters) – The message from the world’s top finance chiefs is loud and clear: rampant inflation is here to stay and taming it will take an extraordinary effort, most likely a recession with job losses and shockwaves through emerging markets. That price is still worth paying, however. Central banks spent…
By Prof. Samitha Hettige The Hatton National Bank opened its Sri Jayawardenepura (Kotte) branch in the early 1990s. Media advertisements announcing the event included a poem from the historic “Selalihini Sandeshaya” in which Sri Jayawardenepura was referred to as the city of rich Buddhists (Ref. Media). The city became a rich economic hub along the…
an article by World Federation of Exchanges New data published by the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE), the global industry group for exchanges and central clearing counterparties, lays bare the full economic impact of the Ukraine war upon a global economy still trying to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. The WFE’s Market Highlights report for…
By Prof. Samitha Hettige The Peoples Republic of China’s Northeast includes three provinces namely Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning (Chinese Navy northern front named its first Aircraft carrier as “Liaoning”). This region was a powerhouse of traditional industries such as steel, automobile, aircraft manufacturing, shipbuilding and petroleum refining etc. (Ref. Chinese sources). Due to problems such…
By Dr. Roshan Rajadurai Inflation looms large over every Sri Lankan as the price of food and other essentials continues to skyrocket. At the center of this historic economic, political, social and humanitarian disaster are a series of deeply flawed and widely criticized policy decisions which have plunged the nation’s agriculture sector into complete disarray….
The recently released Q2 data of the House Price Index of LankaPropertyWeb revealed that the overall selling prices of apartments increased by 45.17% when compared to Q2 of 2021. According to developers and real estate agents that LankaPropertyWeb has been in contact with, these price increases are largely a cause of the demand created for…
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