Hon. Ravi Karunanayake
Hon. Ravi Karunanayake criticized the delay in presenting the matter to Parliament, arguing that earlier action could have reduced losses. He questioned the economic benefit of receiving the fifth IMF tranche, stating that rupee depreciation increases the local value and carrying cost of Sri Lanka’s external debt by more than the expected IMF disbursement. He also challenged the rationale for raising electricity and fuel prices while allowing the rupee to depreciate, and asked who is accountable for the Central Bank’s handling of exchange rate movements.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Thank you. It took four months to present this in Parliament. If earlier, some losses could have been mitigated. Today, the dollar is at LKR 338.78. If the fifth IMF tranche of USD 350 million arrives, that converts to about LKR 117 billion at LKR 335. But depreciation increases the rupee value of our external stock of USD 39 billion by LKR 1,688 billion when moving from LKR 293 to 338. With an 8 percent carrying cost, that’s LKR 135 billion. The IMF-related LKR 117 billion is outweighed by the depreciation effect. Why raise electricity and fuel prices and let the rupee slide, potentially followed by interest rate hikes? The CBSL Governor says it’s a foreign shock. Then why seek independence if not to manage this? When the dollar went to 290, CBSL celebrated; at 339, silence. Who is accountable?
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Tuesday, 19 May 2026 ·No. 23608 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
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/lk/speeches/29202
Cite as: Hon. Ravi Karunanayake. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 19 May 2026. No. 23608. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/29202