Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has charged that the Mahinda Rajapaksa led administration has sentenced the country into a debt trap of almost Rs. 10 trillion.
Speaking in Parliament on Tuesday, Wickremesinghe alleged that due to the arbitrary procedures adopted by the previous government, the country is today submerged in a debt of Rs. 9.5 trillion. “This could even be Rs. 10 trillion,” Wickremesinghe said.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe
But according to the Premier, instead of taking loans like previous governments and trying to get out of this crisis, his government was looking at increasing the income from within the country. “This is what we are trying to do,” he said, soon after proposing several tax amendments.
To get out of the current dept trap; Wickremesinghe said that his government was specifically focusing on bringing in new investments to the country, increasing job opportunities and exports, and implement an effective and proactive income tax process.
“Even when we were drafting the national budget for 2016, we still did not have the exact information about the debt situation the country was in. The previous government had hid all these information. It was a typical situation where the skeletons were hidden in the cupboard,” Wickremesinghe charged.
“Even though the Rajapaksa’s made a huge racket saying they were building roads and highways, it is our government that has to pay for these,” he said. According to Wickremesinghe, the debt of the highway ministry alone stands at Rs. 24 billion.
“The Rajapakse’s ate and sent the bill to us to pay,” he added. ( By Munza Mushtaq @ Colombo Telegraph )
Ajith / March 9, 2016
I Suggest to bring Rajapakse to commission and run the inquiry on live to know the people why and how he did what he did, specially if present government can document as it went out of systematic procedures.
By this can set a good example to the nation.
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Christo pieres / March 9, 2016
Very dissapointing Mr PM. You were appointed not to give excuses but to act. The previous regime robbed and pillaged this countries wealth to the tune of billions is dollars (not rupees) instead of pursuing aggressive and timely action to recover these stolen monies, you instead choose to give lip service and persecute and burden the majority of the public by increasing taxes and other levies that cause heartache to the general public. You and the president (with his presidtial powers) can fast track legislatively to bring these crooks to book and get them to return these monies or use the powers available to the state to recover all these monies that can be used to settle off the debts you refer to.
Your inability to act quickly like you did in 2002 When you were in power for a short period will turn around to bite you once again. Our society has degraded socially, morally, intellectually and ethically and must be ressiuciated with very firm action to reverse this trend quickly for the sake of the people n the future of the country. We don’t have time to wait for a generation change or a decade for this change to happen. As a leader you need to drive this change like a dictator.
Start setting examples by aggressively persecuting the culprits and bring in the death sentence for pillaging the countries wealth. Let it be a harsh lesson for one and all. We need CHANGE that will happen today she not to suit your political ambitions and time lines. Do what Lee Kwan Yueu did for Singpapore. He was a dictator but with a vision for the greater good for his people n country. Stand up now bravely to make a difference for the people are long past waiting n will seek changes until they have leaders this country needs to take them through these tough time
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Shrikharan / March 9, 2016
Ranil first you said in public aired on all TV channels, soon after his defeat at the Presidential elections he tried to stage a coup, and you did nothing about it!
Now you are saying “The Rajapakse’s ate and sent the bill to us to pay,”
It only proves your weakness and your cluelessness how to tackle him. You have to arrest him and charge him as simple as that, else you sack yourself. I think you have now proved your inability to take any action on such an open fraud and you are now a risk to the country when many fraudsters will identify your weakness and make a day light robbery and leave the country dry.
I think as a matter of urgency to save our country, first things first, Ranil should go and allow an able person to take over and let him charge Rajapakse on all his crimes, starting with the supposed coup attempt to deny People’s sovereign right to elect the President and to recover monies Rajapakse stole and stashed in many foreign accounts.
So if Ranil resigns then am sure the country will look after itself and take due care of Rajapakse. It is Ranil who is ‘protecting’ the criminal Rajapakse due to his total inability. So Ranil if you really care for your country then please resign and the people will thank you for it.
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colin / March 9, 2016
Ranil dont get perturbed by some of the adverse comments you see on this issue on this site. We fully understand your predicament and every word what you say on this issue is a fact.
There is plenty out in the world to attract investments to Sri Lanka but its sad to note that many of our High Commisions and Embassies are not doing their part to reach out for these investors,Sadly some sections of the media are in the Rajapakse bandwagon and seem to be sabotaging your efforts to bring our country out from this dilemma,
.Invite all the SL Diplomats back home and give them a stern warning and pressurise them to bring in the investors or else like your college motto says Learn or Deoart say Provide Results or Depart. Give them a short deadline in this respect.Say countries like Turkey,Nigeria,Saudi Arabia,Kuwait,US, Canada,Germany have a wide range of big money wigs waiting to invest but they have been untapped. Get the Embassies to move and ask them to give a feed back every month direct to you. If the results are not wanting just change the Diplomats.
As for you Ranil you are best suited to lead this country and pull it out of this mess. Also go ahead and implement the no questions asked foreign deposit scheme without further delay and just ignore the critics because these critics do not want to see your government ride on the road to success,
The knowledgable masses are with you Ranil and your team is the best our country can produce so go ahead as they say “hounds bark but the caravan moves on”
One last note make every move possible to bring back the trillions stacked in foreign banks by the corrupt of the last regime,
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len / March 10, 2016
[One last note make every move possible to bring back the trillions stacked in foreign banks by the corrupt of the last regime,]
Please appoint Arjuna Mahendran & his in-law’s & Cabral to oversee the investigation.
And if this the best Sri Lanka can produce to lead the country? So the bar been lowered to ground level.
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Cleuso / March 9, 2016
The PM must publish breakdown of the Rs. 10 Trillion Debt.
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Pygmalion / March 9, 2016
The Hon:PM says,the Rajapakses,ate and sent the bill to us to pay….
This is by no means not surprising!~
Wen this guy was schooling at Thurstan College,m in the 60s,he used to walk in to that Muslim Restaurant,opposite Thurstan with his pals and eat to his hearts content,and walk out without PAYING!
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Derby / March 9, 2016
For 5 years after the war ended in 2009, Sri Lanka prospered and thrived, with new infrastructure and investments pouring in. Obviously, loans were taken but my thought is that the MR regime expected to be in power for another 10 years minimum. As such, I highly doubt that loans would have been called in just after regime change.
Most unfortunately, with regime change, and the previous regime leadership being prosecuted and jailed haphazardly investors panicked as Sri Lanka seemed unstable, and the investors took their money and left – have you not noticed the numbers in Sri Lanka stock exchange?
Moreover, the bond scam took place with the PM’s blessings. Repercussions of the bond scam has a waterfall effect. The current regime and the media have swept the bond scam under the rug – unseen but collecting dust mites exponentially. No one is investigating the waterfall effect of the bond scam.
So, now the middle class has to pay – 15% VAT for a developing country? Essentially, sliding the already over priced Sri Lanka’s economy in to an abyss!
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Karthigesu Nirmalan-Nathan / March 10, 2016
They all look surprised. All the so-called infrastructure developments and white elephants did not just appear. They all had to be paid for. I never heard that Sri Lanka won any big Lottery of late.
All we had was war, a stagnant economy at best, of course the affluent lifestyle of Mahinda. Well somebody has to pay for your hero’s “Chinthanava,” my God him and his bloody Chinthanava. Bloody Ponniah, he must have got the idea from Colonel Gadaffi.
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Ruvan / March 10, 2016
“පසුගිය දශකයේ දී රට තුළ විශේෂයෙන් සමාජයේ ඉහළ ස්ථරයන් තුළ පෞද්ගලික ප්රාග්ධනයේ අතිවිශාල වර්ධනයක් දැකිය හැකි වුණා. ඉඩම් මිල ඉහළ යෑම සහ කොටස් මිල ඉහළ යෑම මෙම විශාල ප්රාග්ධන වර්ධනයට හේතුවක් ලෙස සැලකිය හැකියි. මේ තත්ත්වය පසුගිය වසර 10 පුරා පැවැතුණා.”
This is what he has said in Parliament. Can someone translate this to English. I believe he admits that there was a huge development in the country during the last 10 years.
Thanks.
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Iroshan / March 10, 2016
It does not say there was a huge development in the country. It just says that in the highest strata of social hierarchy there was an increase in private wealth. The word private been key here. And it is attributed to the increase in land value.
Land value mostly went up and is still going up due to the lax banking policies in terms of loan and lease allocation -> leading to higher demand and nonsensical prices. By no means is it as worse as the US before the financial crisis, but there is a distressing pattern of wanton lending in this country.
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Piyasoma / March 10, 2016
Ruwan, what matters is how many of the percentage of the population previledged to improve their pvt economies ?
There was a huge progress in rapid increase of crimes. Today, we pluck the flowers of them.. day to another. Ballige putha et al ate the nation and country.
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RaviP / March 10, 2016
Who is this ideot is trying to fool.Blaming everything on Mahinda.Today we
are faced with this situation is due to the Scam of the century.I am referring
to now famous bond scam in which we are paying a high interest.Our foreign reserve has gone down drastically.We are still waiting the opening of Volkswagen
company.Economically Sri lanka is in a steep decline.Nothing is going on with regard to development.Sure Mahinda and his cronies were corrupt.Every politian
in this country has corruption in their blood.But at leaset Mahinda had a plan and the economy was triving.Fisrt when MS-RW came to power all chinese Projects were either postponed or cancelled.That stopped the momentum that was their for
the economy.Now after one year current President and the Prime minster is carrying a begging bowl and going after chinese money.I call this government as
a NATO government.That is No action talk only government.Instead of spending spending lot of time in changing the constution and constitution assemblies try to make the economy grow.Poor person who is a sinhalese,tamil,muslim does
not worry about constitution assemblies.They worry about job security cost of
living
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The Plain Thruth / March 10, 2016
RANEEL is a person who has a superiority complex in him from the day he was born, through his school days, right up to present.
Even in his days at Royal College he displayed that radalaya attitude and kept company with his bosom pals like Malik Samarawickrema and a few. It is known that he kept company with only poofters.
He is no better than the Rajapucksirs in way of thinking and he is totally gutless. As long as he can give his close friends the chance to make a few bucks in a short time, thats all in his mind.
Secondly Raneel does not bring good luck in all that he does and that is a fact. He is another idol worshipping idiot running to all the temples and soothsayers in south india to have a peek into his future.
Yes ! all need to have belief in some faith or other but not to the extense of our politicians who have nothing in their heads other than breaking coconuts, tying stupid threads around their wrists, giving pinkamas to 1000 buddhist priests, getting into black magic, believing in astrology, and other mumbo jumbo, in all that they do, etc etc etc.
Honestly and truthfully Raneel is leading sri lanka to another dark period from which the country will suffer again.
There is no future for the country and lankans will have to live with the fact that whoever comes in will rob, cheat, loot, plunder, murder, rape, etc. This is the curse of misusing the ballot over time and if so then so be it.
All those who can get out, do so while the going is good, and let the scum remain to fight for the scraps.
There will come a day when Raneel will pay dearly, very dearly and when he does it will be to damn late for him to turn around and say in a few words ” where did it all go wrong “.
” DISCE AUT DISCEDE “
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Sinchoappu / March 10, 2016
Any leader should bring some superiority .. else, he would not function specially in a country like ours.
See, if you call RW as such man, MR and his brother ( who really governed everything being hidden in the coat of MR) – what kind of arrogance they both had ?
Remember the days Gota attacked hi hi hi hu hu hu .. to a interviewer from BBC, to the question who killed Lasantha Wickramathunga ? World opened their eyes even wider looking at the manner president s brother reacted… how come him to betray the nation that way. Mostly politicos or any one rerpesenting bodies should be diplomatic and sober.. but were they behaving that way ?
All these are not even topics for RW and MY3, both behave civilized – they are not pompous at all. They fly by the same charter flights not by special ones when they are invited by foreign missions. They have not abused the millions of tax payers money of rtheir travels yet.
Now Germans becoming close to SRILANKA, I love to do do whatever I can if we can bring investments from HERE to our mother land. There are germans known to me – want to invest in the country not in India.
It is just they love the island so much Prior to 83, it was their favorite holiday island. After 83 they changed it to eruopeans island. But sitll they are longing to visit the country.
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sr / March 10, 2016
let judiciary sentence the culprits and people are eager to see your colors.
sugar coat the bitter pills but people are wise
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lankanath wickramaratne / March 19, 2016
Gentlmen ! Developmentis not merelytaking money from lending institutions/countries and spending on infrastructure !(if so any poor country can be a developed country in one or two years !(no sir ! It is much more than that ! It is aboute cutting wastage / improving efficiency /stoping ofpolitical interference in development(no real need but onley a political need !(ex.developmentin hambantota ! (And I heard that this gentleman is goinng to build a cricket ground in polonnaruwa !)all thease can be break down to one word ! Yes sir ! That is REFORMS both economic and political!
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Sithum / April 12, 2016
I would like to tell the authors, Ranil, MS and MR, and every other member of parliament that I hate everyone of you. Because behind these accusations are friends who have relationships from decades ago.
No one is going to send anyone to jail, they just blab to fool us. 10 Trillion $? So what .. you charge.. bulls that charge do more damage than you sir. You’re just a monkey waiting to be president.
No one is going to vote for you, MS or MR ever again.
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Joseph / July 11, 2016
RANIL, YOU WANT TO USE PREVIOUS GOVT’S CORRUPTIONS AS REASONS FOR YOUR LACK OF PROGRESS. AT THE SAME TIME YOU WANT TO PROTECT YOUR BUDDIES IN THE PREVIOUS REGIME ESPECIALLY THE RAJAPAKSES. TO THIS DAY YOU HAVE NOT SUCCESSFULLY PROSECUTED A SINGLE CORRUPT INDIVIDUAL FROM THE LAST REGIME.
YOU CANNOT HAVE THE CAKE AND EAT IT AS WELL.
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