The Hon. Sajith Premadasa - Leader of the Opposition

¶ 01 Hon. Minister of Finance and Economic Stabilization, you yourself accepted in your answer that micro, small, and medium-scale industrialists contribute 52% to the Gross Domestic Product. However, due to the Easter Sunday attacks, the sovereign default, the COVID-19 pandemic, the “Dicha” cyclone, and the Middle East crisis, MSME industrialists are facing grave challenges. On a condition of the IMF, you are removing CESS gradually. This will seriously disadvantage domestic industries, especially by removing start-up protection for infant industries.

¶ 02 Further, although you temporarily halted parate execution during that period, no parallel measures were taken to restructure the debts of small and medium industrialists who are over-indebted, in CRIB, and collapsing under loan burdens. They have suffered severe injustice as a result. I ask whether you have a program to uplift, protect, and especially to create export-oriented industry in this country.

¶ 03 Factories in our country are being closed and moved to Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. I propose that you create dedicated industrial parks to bring back those manufacturers from those states. Companies such as Brandix and MAS Holdings have closed factories here and are moving them to Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, and Odisha. This is gravely harmful to our industrial system and will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. Therefore, without dancing to every word of the IMF, take steps to strengthen the industrial sector, safeguard MSMEs, and especially boost exports. Otherwise, many factories of MAS Holdings and Brandix will be closed here and moved to Visakhapatnam, Odisha, and other Indian states because they are offered attractive packages there. Then we will lose factories and jobs, while those countries—India, for instance—gain strength. What steps will you take in this regard?