Sri Lanka’s economy: PM Ranil Wickremesinghe

 

EXCLUSIVE

I can turn around Sri Lanka’s economy: PM Ranil Wickremesinghe

Sri Lanka’s newly appointed prime minister says it will take one and a half years to stabilise the crisis-hit economy.

Colombo, Sri Lanka – Ranil Wickremesinghe, the newly appointed prime minister of crisis-hit Sri Lanka, has said he is confident he can turn the economy around – but cautioned it will take 18 months before stability returns.

“The year 2023 is going to be difficult, but by 2024 things should pick up,” Wickremesinghe told Al Jazeera last week [Thursday] in a wide-ranging interview at his official residence in the capital, Colombo.

The 73-year-old leader, who in May became prime minister for the sixth time, said that he took up the job under extraordinary circumstances.

“We had nearly two days without a government; things were getting out of hand,” he said, recalling the mass protests over shortages of fuel and electricity that forced Mahinda Rajapaksa, his predecessor and the brother of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to resign.

“I thought ‘the situation is bad, it’s your country, so you can’t be wondering whether you are going to succeed or not. You take it over and work to succeed,’” said Wickremesinghe, who met the president at the request of some MPs from the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna party.

“I have confidence I can turn the economy around,” he said.

 The island nation of 22 million has been brought to a virtual standstill due to acute shortages of fuel and essential items such as food and medicines, as the government ran out of foreign reserves to import commodities earlier this year.

Sri Lanka defaulted on its external debt in April and the usable foreign reserves are so low that it has struggled to cover its needs from the international market.

In Colombo, the roads are nearly empty. Some long queues can be seen near the few petrol stations that are still open, but educational institutions, businesses and government offices remain shut. Hotels in the capital – once full of tourists – are struggling to stay afloat due to a sharp drop in guests.

Worst crisis since independence in 1948

Wickremesinghe, who has been tasked with lifting the country out of its worst crisis since independence in 1948, said there will be petrol shortages until at least July 22, when the next shipment is expected.

“We are buying fuel either using Indian credit lines or the foreign exchanges that we get from remittances. It’s [remittances] a small amount, but nevertheless, sometimes we get a billion dollar[s] or a billion and a half. The rest of the reserves from what we got from the creditors have already been busted,” he said.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, right, greets Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe during the latter’s oath-taking ceremony on May 25 [Sri Lankan President’s Office via AP]

Food inflation has risen to nearly 60 percent, while the crashing of the Sri Lankan rupee by more than 80 percent since March has further eroded people’s purchasing power.

Last month, the prime minister said the economy had “collapsed”.

“It’s a big setback to the economy and caused lot of hardship to the people … We have been taking steps … especially to get gas, which will be available in the next few days,” he told Al Jazeera, adding supplies of diesel and furnace oil have also been made.

“The issue has been petrol … and that will take a bit of time.”

Furthermore, the prime minister added that a gas deal has been secured, with most of the funding coming from the World Bank, which will ensure supplies for the next four months.

 

 

Dutch central bank apologises for historic links to slave trade

De Nederlandsche Bank announces a series of measures aimed at reducing ‘negative effects of 19th-century slavery’.

Klaas Knot speaks at the Group of 20 high-level seminar in Japan

The Dutch central bank chief has apologised for the institution’s involvement in the 19th-century slave trade, the latest expression of contrition in the Netherlands linked to the country’s historic role in the trade in enslaved people.

The apology came on Friday at an event on the country’s national day marking the Dutch abolishment of slavery and followed similar moves in recent years from municipal authorities in the main Dutch cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht.

De Nederlandsche Bank has acknowledged that it was involved in the transatlantic slave trade between 1814 and 1863 and even paid compensation to plantation owners when the Netherlands abolished slavery, including to members of the central bank’s board at the time.

Klaas Knot, the president of the bank, told a gathering in Amsterdam: “Today, on behalf of De Nederlandsche Bank, I apologise for these reprehensible facts.”

“I apologise to all those who, because of the personal choices of many, including my predecessors, were reduced to the colour of their skin,” he said.

The bank announced a series of measures including boosting diversity and inclusiveness in its ranks and setting up a five-million-euro ($5.2m) fund for projects aimed at reducing “contemporary negative effects of nineteenth-century slavery”.

Knot’s apology came exactly a year after Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema apologised for the Dutch capital’s role in the slave trade.

In April, Dutch bank ABN AMRO also apologised for historic links to slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries.