The Hon. Ravi Karunanayake
Ravi Karunanayake urged the Government to retain the SVAT mechanism until e-filing and VAT-1 automation are fully operational, citing the short implementation timeline and risks to exporters’ cash flows if VAT is payable upfront. He said exporters already face high interest rates, taxes, utility costs, tariff pressures, and anti-dumping-related cost issues, and asked that the IMF be informed that export-sector protection is necessary.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Minister, I raised this because implementation is in roughly 35–40 days. You say submissions must be correct — we agree. But if our Central Bank admits to an error of US$1.8 billion with the IMF, company-level lapses are hardly surprising. Our exporters are struggling — paying 25% interest, 36% taxes, high electricity and water. With added tariff issues under Trump’s policy, they face severe hardship. Around 63% of export value is via deemed exporters; once VAT is payable upfront, their cash flows will be hit. Pending practical experience, please keep SVAT until e-filing and VAT-1 automation are fully operational. Tell the IMF our exporters must be protected. Also, with anti-dumping cost issues, if refunds take four months, even anti-dumping decisions get distorted.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Wednesday, 23 July 2025 ·No. 1754386160089643 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
- Page · column
- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
- Permalink
/lk/speeches/4141
Cite as: The Hon. Ravi Karunanayake. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 23 July 2025. No. 1754386160089643. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/4141