Colombo (LNW): The charges on public transportation services have been increased in response to the recent fuel price hike, announced the National Transport Commission (NTC).
Accordingly, the bus fares will increase by 4.01 per cent from midnight tomorrow (02).
The minimum fare, however, will remain unchanged, the Commission noted.
Meanwhile, container haulage charges will soar by 5 per cent, according to the Association of Container Transporters, effective from today (01).
Colombo (LNW): The Sri Lankan Rupee indicates further appreciation against the US Dollar today (01) in comparison to yesterday, as revealed by the official exchange rates list issued by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL).
Accordingly, the buying price of the US Dollar has dropped to Rs. 314.19 from yesterday’s Rs. 315.33, and the selling price to Rs. 325.86 from yesterday’s Rs. 326.93.
Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan Rupee has also appreciated against several other foreign currencies as well.
Colombo (LNW): The licence of Bimputh Finance PLC (BFP) will be canceled as it has continuously been violating provisons of the Finance Business Act (FBA), the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) announced in a statement today (01).
Despite several time extensions granted to Bimputh Finance by the CB Monetary Board to comply with the provisions of the FBA, Directions and Rules issued thereunder and adhere to the Masterplan for Consolidation of Non-Bank Financial Institutions (the Masterplan), no satisfactory progress has been made by BFP to revive the critical condition faced by BFP, the island nation’s monetary regulator said in its statement.
Full Statement:
Bimputh Finance PLC-Cancellation of Licence issued under the Finance Business Act, No. 42 of 2011
Bimputh Finance PLC (BFP), a Licensed Finance Company under the Finance Business Act, No. 42 of 2011 (FBA) has continuously been violating/contravening provisions of the FBA, several general Directions and Rules that have been issued with the view to achieve the overall objective of financial system stability and also specific directions issued to BFP in order to address the critical financial position of the company. Consequently, the financial condition of BFP had been deteriorating due to deficient capital level, poor asset quality and continuous losses.
Despite several time extensions granted to BFP by the Monetary Board of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (Monetary Board) to comply with the provisions of the FBA, Directions and Rules issued thereunder and adhere to the Masterplan for Consolidation of Non-Bank Financial Institutions (the Masterplan), no satisfactory progress has been made by BFP to revive the critical condition faced by BFP.
In view of the above, the Monetary Board has decided to cancel the licence issued to BFP under the FBA to carry on finance business, with effect from 01.09.2023. Accordingly, BFP is not allowed to engage in Finance Business with effect from same date.
Largely complying with the Monetary Board directions issued, BFP managed to repay major portion of its deposit liabilities during 2022 and Sri Lanka Deposit Insurance and Liquidity Support Scheme (SLDILSS) will initiate necessary actions to pay compensation to the unclaimed depositors of BFP, up to a maximum of Rs. 1,100,000/- per depositor as per the regulations of the SLDILSS. Accordingly, all eligible depositors of BFP will be able to recover their deposits in full through SLDILSS upon submitting due claims within two years from the date of cancellation of licence or before the appointment of the liquidator by competent court, whichever occurs earlier as per the regulation of SLDILSS.
Further, all debtors of BFP are advised to repay their dues to BFP on time, only through a bank account under the name of BFP and maintain records for all such payments.
You may contact the Department of Supervision of Non-Bank Financial Institutions through following for further clarifications.
Telephone : 0112 477229, 0112 477504
Fax : 0112 477 738
E mail : [email protected]
Colombo (LNW): The no confidence motion proposed against Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella will be taken up for parliamentary debate in the chambers next week, as decided by the Parliamentary Business Committee.
Accordingly, the no confidence motion against the Minister will be taken up for debate on September 06, 07 and 08, 2023, and the voting will take place at 5.30 pm Friday, September 08, 2023.
Colombo (LNW): The national fuel ID QR code system approved for purchasing fuel has now been quashed, as per a latest government decision.
Accordingly, the QR code system for fuel purchases will be revoked from today (01) said Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekara.
Colombo (LNW): SINOPEC the newly established Chinese energy solutions company in Sri Lanka has announced its new fuel prices this (01) morning:
The SINOPEC fuel prices for petrol and diesel stand about Rs. 3 below than that of the other two fuel companies in Sri Lanka.
Colombo (LNW): Matara Branch of Sri Lanka Red Cross Society is set to launch its sixth medical clinic at Kotapola Waralla Junior School in Matara this Sunday (03).
The clinic will operate full day providing free medical services for diabetes, high blood pressure and all other diseases, and will also provide free medical tests, treatments and medication, Red Cross said in a statement.
Persons requiring further treatments will also be referred to the main hospitals that day, the Society added.
Colombo (LNW): Teh Sri Lankan Rupee has further appreciated against the US Dollar at leading commercial banks in the country today (01) in comparison to the day before.
Accordingly, Peoples Bank reveals that the buying price of the US Dollar has dropped to Rs. 311.42 from Rs. 312.88, and the selling price to Rs. 326.05 from Rs. 327.58.
At Commercial Bank, the buying and selling prices of the US Dollar remain unchanged at Rs. 313.72 and Rs. 326, respectively.
At Sampath Bank, the buying price of the US Dollar has dropped to Rs. 312 from Rs. 314, and the selling price to Rs. 323 from Rs. 325.
By: Staff Writer
Colombo (LNW): The government has extended a date for pension funds and the Employees Provident Funds to exchange Treasury bonds to September 11 following a delay in enacting a penal interest rate for superannuation funds along with the pending Supreme Court case.
A legal amendment to change the Inland Revenue Act to charge 30 percent tax from superannuation funds instead of the current 14 percent, has been delayed amid the legal challenge.
Placing the entire burden of domestic debt restructuring on ‘captive’ institutions — the Central Bank and the EPF, which is managed by the monetary board— is an easy option for the government, eminent economic experts claimed.
But the favoured treatment of commercial banks and domestic government security holders compared to the EPF is an inequitable distribution of the burden of debt restructuring, they added.
Two bonds (9.00 percent 01 Sept 2023 and 11.20 percent 01 September 2023 bond) would be excluded from the list of eligible bonds as they will mature before the offer date. The bonds would also be excluded from the offers that had been accepted.
The participation threshold for 1 October 2023 (7.00-pct), 15 November 2023 (6.3 -pct) and 15 December 2023 (11.6-pct) would be changed to 50 percent.
The participation threshold for 1 October 2023 (7.00-pct), 15 November 2023 (6.3 -pct) and 15 December 2023 (11.6-pct) would be changed to 50 percent.
The present government’s income tax policy to attract an effective tax rate of 30% would require a salary above Rs. 500,000 per month. Probably 90% of the working population draws less than 500,000 per month, economic analysts said.
This government is now amending the income tax laws to impose a 30% income tax on EPF/ETF.
This tax will apply on all of EPF/ETF income without any tax relief. Therefore, even an employee earning a monthly salary of Rs. 30,000 will be liable to bear the tax of 30% on their savings on EPF/ETF.
The present government’s income tax policy to attract an effective tax rate of 30% would require a salary above Rs. 500,000 per month. Probably 90% of the working population draws less than 500,000 per month.
This government is now amending the income tax laws to impose a 30% income tax on EPF/ETF. This tax will apply on all of EPF/ETF income without any tax relief.
Therefore, even an employee earning a monthly salary of Rs. 30,000 will be liable to bear the tax of 30% on their savings on EPF/ETF.
At the end of 25 – 30 years of employment, the EPF holder bears an accumulated reserve with low interest. It is estimated that the monthly return will cover between 20% – 35% of an individual’s cost of living in retirement. Proposed 30% tax on EPF will further reduce income.
‘Is this justified against low income workers?’ asked SJB, Parliamentarian Eran Wickramaratne issuing a special statement. Foreigners invest in bonds of small countries looking for more income, absorbing the risk factor. Having already profited from the high interest/income, restructuring of said loans does not bear significant consequences to the investors, he added.
Bill dengler is trying to become an Italian citizen. He has all the documents ready to go. But Mr Dengler, an American software engineer who was born fully blind, cannot make an appointment with the Italian consulate in San Francisco. Its booking system uses a colour-based calendar, which is not legible to his screen reader, a device that delivers a website’s content in audio form. And, perhaps because slots fill rapidly, rules prohibit him from hiring someone to make the appointment on his behalf.
What are Mr Dengler’s options? This being America, he could, of course, sue. The government largely relies on private citizens and their obliging lawyers to enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act (ada), the federal law passed 33 years ago to protect the civil rights of disabled people. This deputisation has resulted in tonnes of litigation, some of which has done more for lawyers than for disabled people. In the past five years, website-accessibility lawsuits have surged to comprise about a fifth of such claims. According to Usablenet, a company that both tracks litigation and sells services to help clients prevent it, plaintiffs have filed more than 16,700 digital-accessibility lawsuits in state and federal court since 2018.
The ada only permits plaintiffs to recover attorneys’ fees. But New York and California, where the vast majority of cases are brought, allow plaintiffs to tack on state-level claims to their federal cases and sue for damages. The financial incentives for both plaintiffs and lawyers are hard to ignore. “I think that this was a gravy train that people jumped on,” says David Stein, who defends businesses. The country’s most active law firm, according to Usablenet, appears to have been founded in 2020; the fourth-most-prolific opened in 2021. Serial plaintiffs abound. In a single month in 2018 a blind man in Queens filed 43 lawsuits. In the year from January 2022, six people, represented by one law firm, brought 435 suits. The most active plaintiffs in 2021 and 2022 filed over 100 lawsuits each, according to Accessibility.com, which also tracks litigation.
While the ada orders businesses to add wheelchair ramps, it has never set out precisely how they should design their websites—it simply mandates “effective communication”. Nearly 5% of America’s population is blind or has low vision (uncorrectable with glasses). Making the web broadly usable was always the goal: at the First International World Wide Web conference in 1994, Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the internet, called upon pioneers to prioritise “this feeling that the web is totally accessible to everybody”.
By 1995 a group of organisations started what eventually became the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These are now about 50 technical recommendations, regularly updated, that prescribe minimum standards for colour contrast, keyboard operability (visually impaired people use the tab key, rather than a mouse) and alt-text (written descriptions of images). They have not been adopted by the ada, but are frequently cited in plaintiffs’ lawsuits.
Some of those standards meaningfully ease the burden on disabled site-goers; others are less critical. But the lawsuits tend not to differentiate. Complaints can hinge on “technical non-conformance”, says Kris Rivenburgh, founder of ADAcompliance.net. Since virtually all settle before they reach trial, judges rarely weigh in on whether they created a barrier to access.
On occasion, the Department of Justice (doj) has intervened directly. It brought enforcement actions, for example, against pharmacy giants Rite Aid and Kroger for—recalling Mr Dengler’s consulate conundrum—creating inaccessible covid-19 vaccine portals. The private lawsuits, meanwhile, tend to target smaller companies reporting annual revenue under $25m; and most are retailers, not purveyors of education or health-care services.
The spectre of litigation may help push up standards. But Jeffrey Gottlieb, a plaintiffs’ attorney in New York, frankly admits he is not so sure that litigation has had a broader “deterrent effect”. Others speculate that the lawsuits have even stymied progress, “causing corporations to throw up their arms and say I’m going to get sued anyway”, as Mr Stein puts it. Jason Taylor, the head of innovation at Usablenet, argues that the profusion of lawsuits can indeed take credit for “significantly” improving accessibility. Still, he admits, “to be on the cynical side”, large companies may believe that settling lawsuits is “cheap compared to doing it the right way”.
The wrong way is with overlays, plug-ins that show customisable website interfaces to disabled users, promising to help companies achieve accessibility without overhauling code. These interfaces often interfere with the technology blind people already use, and they do not prevent litigation: Usablenet reports that over 400 companies using overlays were hit with lawsuits in the first half of 2023. Experts say there is no substitute for auditing sites, designing fixes and manually testing them.
Two things could curb lawsuits, says Rob Thorpe, a defence attorney. Plaintiffs could be required to issue notice, providing the offending business the chance to fix the problem before suing. The other would be for the doj to give more clarity on the requirements for websites, a move that seemingly everyone supports. Both have the advantage of benefiting the real parties on either side, rather than those profiting from the confusion.
THE ECONOMIST