The Hon. Ravi Karunanayake
Hon. Ravi Karunanayake welcomed measures on taxation, digitalization, public-private partnerships, SME loan settlement, port development, credit guarantees and SOE reforms, but questioned why no allocation was made for tourism. He queried the adequacy and location in the Budget of the Rs. 5 billion support for paddy purchasing, arguing it was small relative to the Maha harvest’s value. He also asked which sectors would receive priority capital to achieve export and FDI targets, and raised concerns that high domestic interest rates would undermine investment competitiveness compared with other countries.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Before starting the debate I yielded five minutes for questions; please add that time to my speaking time.
¶ 02 Additional tax, digitalization, public-private partnerships, settling SME loans via ADB support, port development, establishing a National Credit Guarantee Institution with ADB, and SOE reforms are all good. But not a single cent has been allocated to our thrust industry—tourism.
¶ 03 On agriculture: the Maha paddy harvest is about 2.4 million metric tons, valued at about Rs. 345 billion; Rs. 5 billion is only about 1.28%, which does not indicate market orientation. Though opening bank support is good, where in the document is the Rs. 5,000 million capital infusion?
¶ 04 On investment: to expand the economy, we must increase FDI/exports—targets suggest USD 19 billion, with USD 6 billion in services and USD 13 billion in goods exports. Which sectors get priority capital to reach this? With interest rates around 15%, who will invest here when competitors pay 6%? Ten percent margins go to banks; how do we balance competitiveness?
Provenance
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- Hansard, Monday, 24 February 2025 ·No. 1741236032093385 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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Cite as: The Hon. Ravi Karunanayake. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 24 February 2025. No. 1741236032093385. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/11696