The Hon. Ravi Karunanayake
Ravi Karunanayake questioned the Central Bank’s credit allocation, noting that despite 25% private sector credit growth, much of it is going to pawning, credit cards and leasing rather than SMEs, youth, women and capital expenditure. He argued that this pattern should be redirected to support higher economic growth of 8–10%, while also criticizing the Central Bank’s close alignment with IMF reserve-focused priorities.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Minister, thank you for the detailed response.
¶ 02 Hon. Speaker, this shows the Central Bank’s operational stance. While private sector credit shows growth of 25%, much is flowing into pawning, credit cards and leasing rather than SMEs, youth, women, and capital expenditure. This pattern must change to drive 8–10% growth. The IMF focus on reserves is noted, but the Central Bank appears to act as a branch of the IMF here. Please reorient credit to SMEs, youth, women and capital spending rather than pawning/credit cards.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Friday, 20 February 2026 ·No. 23331 ·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/29934
Cite as: The Hon. Ravi Karunanayake. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 20 February 2026. No. 23331. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/29934