Another crucial discussion between the International Monetary Fund and Sri Lanka’s creditors is scheduled to be held on November 3rd.
Debt restructuring in Sri Lanka is to be discussed at length.
Sagala Ratnayake, President’s Senior Adviser on National Security and Chief of Staff to the President, and Sarwat Jahan, the new Resident Representative of the International Monetary Fund for Sri Lanka, Tubugas Feridhanusetyawan, the Resident Representative of the International Monetary Fund who is leaving Sri Lanka after completing his term of service. Tubagus Feridhanusetyawan) was held yesterday (27) afternoon at the President’s office and this was mentioned.
Special attention was paid to debt restructuring measures as well as creditor’s conference.
Sagala Ratnayake told the representatives of the International Monetary Fund that he expected to inform President Ranil Wickramasinghe about the matters that were focused on in this discussion and to inform the President’s response promptly.
RHS Samaratunga, Senior Advisor to the President on Economic Affairs, was also present in this discussion.
Buddha Sasana Minister Vidura Wickremanayake says a new mechanism to be introduced to inform Nayaka Theras about priests involved in anti-religious activities and to take disciplinary action against them, when necessary.
Public Security Ministry says Government’s programme to establish over 200 new police stations islandwide has been temporarily suspended: reason is the unavailability of necessary financial allocations and shortage of police officers.
In the first 9 months of 2022, 199 rapes, 951 statutory rapes (where the girl is below age of consent), and 273 rapes on children, totalling 1,423 reported to Police: last year’s number was 1,475.
During Governor Dr Weerasinghe’s first 203 days in office, Central Bank “prints” a staggering Rs.691 bn at an average of Rs.3.4 bn per day: during Governor Cabraal’s entire tenure of 203 days, “money printed” was Rs.446 bn at an average of Rs.2.2 bn per day: an increase of 54% per day during Weerasinghe’s tenure so far.
Police Spokesperson says CID had arrested 2 Chinese and 1 Local person on suspicion of committing crypto-currency frauds amounting to Rs.14 bn (USD 37.8 mn): Police also say only scammers guarantee “big returns”: Sri Lanka’s Government T-Bills now pay over 33% per annum.
State Minister Geetha Kumarasinghe states she will officially request President Wickremesinghe to prevent mothers with children below 5 years to work abroad.
Hotels Association President M. Shanthikumar urges political fraternity to stop the “drama” and look into the best interests of the country and people: says unruly protests disrupt daily activities of people and businesses: asks authorities to prevent such activities.
Police Spokesman says car-jacking and thefts have increased significantly: 1,406 vehicles stolen in the 9 months ending on September 30, 2022, while 1,405 vehicles were stolen during the year 2021: main reason was negligence of the vehicle owners.
State Defence Minister Premitha Bandara Tennakoon says the Indian Ocean should not be a “playground” for world military powers: asserts the ocean is a vital channel of communication, a large volume of energy, raw material and food supply between East and West.
Deputy Director General – Medical Supplies, Dr. D R K Herath says there is a shortage of 160 essential drugs out of 383: hopes well-wishers will help.
Colombo, Sri Lanka (28 October 2022) – “My husband’s income has drastically reduced because of the country’s situation. Our entire family now depends on me”, says K. Vanitha, who runs a tailoring business in Ampara, Sri Lanka. As cost of living increases and purchasing power declines rapidly, like Vanitha, many women entrepreneurs are shouldering heavy burdens and struggling with the continuity of their businesses.
UN Women with support from the Government of Japan, provided equipment and productive assets worth LKR 50.4million (approx. USD 140,000) to help women entrepreneurs hit hardest by Sri Lanka’s economic downturn. On 26th October 2022, Ambassador MIZUKOSHI of Japan handed over some of the equipment, such as sewing machines and flour grinding machines to the women entrepreneurs supported at the distribution ceremony held in Colombo. Besides them, 384 women from the Districts of Ampara, Monaragala and Vavuniya received assistance.
The in-kind assistance provided is part of UN Women’s 3-year project on ‘Implementation of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in Sri Lanka’ funded by the Government of Japan.
Speaking at the event in Colombo, Hon. Geetha Samanmalee Kumarasinghe, State Minister of Women and Child Affairs said: “This project has also developed the skills of more than 100 officers at the Divisional Secretariat level, who will in turn work to empower and build resilience of other women and ensure gender equality is integrated within Sri Lankan society”.
Speaking on the need to place women and girls at the centre of relief and recovery efforts, H.E. MIZUKOSHI Hideaki, Ambassador of Japan to Sri Lanka noted that; “It is imperative to involve women and girls who comprise more than half of the country’s population in order to achieve inclusive development. Through our longstanding partnership with UN Women and Sri Lanka, Japan is committed to advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment in-line with the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development”.
As part of the project, close to 800 women have received capacity building trainings on business and entrepreneurship conducted by UN Women and Chrysalis.
“Investing in women’s economic empowerment is at the heart of UN Women’s mandate. The entrepreneurs supported through this project are receiving one-to-one business coaching and mentoring from other established enterprises to help implement their business strategies and ensure continuity, growth and diversification of their ventures”, said Esther Hoole, Officer in Charge at UN Women Sri Lanka.
The participants, including Vanitha, that qualified for in-kind assistance, “developed business plans that were reviewed by an independent panel including local government officials, sectoral technical officers and external stakeholders to assess feasibility and awarding of the requested assistance”, said Ashika Gunasena, CEO of Chrysalis. The enterprises range across several sectors including crop cultivation, agri-business, garments, livestock rearing, food manufacturing, spice grinding, small groceries, value addition to coconut and palmyrah value chains amongst others.
Vanitha who received a sewing machine for her tailoring business said; “Since prices of ready-made garments have gone up, more people are beginning to buy fabric for stitching. This will help me expand my business and future investments”.
What Elon Musk might do with Twitter after his takeover is complete
‘Free speech absolutist’ could reinstate Donald Trump’s account and press ahead with staff cuts
After a months-long fight over whether Elon Musk would become its new owner, Twitter appears to have entered a new chapter with the reported exit of several top executives.
Ahead of a Friday deadline for the Tesla CEO to complete his $44bn deal to buy the social media company, it was widely reported that Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, the chief financial officer, Ned Segal, and the head of legal policy, trust and safety, Vijaya Gadde, were ousted.
With Musk at Twitter’s reins, the question now turns to what he plans to do with the social media platform in the weeks and months to come.
The billionaire has not been coy about his ambitions, though he has been scarce on details on how he plans to accomplish them. Here is some of what to expect now.
Address freedom of speech concerns
One of the most contentious issues around the Twitter deal, back when the world’s richest man initially expressed interest in buying it, was Musk’s concerns around free speech. He is a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” who has raised concerns about the platform downplaying certain posts with its algorithms that curate what a user sees. In an interview before he agreed to buy the business, he raised concerns about “having tweets mysteriously be promoted and demoted with no insight into what’s going on”. An open-source algorithm could address this, he suggested.
A cache of texts disclosed in a filing at the end of September, when Twitter was taking Musk to court in Delaware over his attempts to try to back out of the deal, gave further evidence of his concerns. The podcaster Joe Rogan asked the Tesla chief executive in April – after his acquisition of a stake in the company had been revealed – whether he would “liberate Twitter from the censorship happy mob”. Musk replied: “I will provide advice, which they may or may not choose to follow.”
The same cache showed Mathias Döpfner, chief executive of the media group Axel Springer, which includes Politico, urging Musk to make Twitter “censorship free” and create a “marketplace for algorithms” so that “if you’re a snowflake and don’t want content that offends you, pick another algorithm”.
Donald Trump consults his mobile phone during a meeting. He was removed from Twitter in January 2021 after the Capitol riots. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP
Another text recommended hiring a “Blake Masters type” – a reference to the Trump-backed Arizona Senate candidate – as “VP of enforcement”.
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In a note on Thursday to advertisers, Musk said that he acquired Twitter because he believes it’s important for the “future of civilisation to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner”. However, he conceded that the platform cannot become a “free-for-all hellscape”. “In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all,” he wrote.
Musk has also said he is against censorship “that goes far beyond the law”, but legislation is changing in the UK with the online safety bill (although its freedom of speech provisions might now be tweaked) and in the European Union with the digital services act.
Reinstate Donald Trump
A corollary of Musk’s free speech stance is that people banned from the platform could get their accounts back. The former US president was removed in January 2021 following the Capitol riots and Musk has said he would overturn that. Asked in May about Trump, he said: “I would reverse the permanent ban,” adding that Twitter was “left-biased”.
Other figures banned from Twitter include the US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and, in the UK, the rightwing commentator Katie Hopkins.
Cut costs
Musk’s financing for the takeover includes $13bn of bank debt that will sit on Twitter’s balance sheet. That debt will need to be paid for and in its most recent results Twitter generated negative free cashflow (spending more cash to run the business than it takes in) of nearly $124m. Twitter will have to do better than that financially and cost cuts have featured in Musk’s thinking.
Musk told investors interested in funding his acquisition of the company that he plans to cut 75% of the workforce, according to documents seen by the Washington Post. But reports indicate the Tesla CEO told Twitter employees on his first visit to the company on 5 October that he did not plan to lay off that many workers. However, he is still expected to make some cuts. Twitter employs 7,500 people.
In June, he told Twitter employees that the company “needs to get healthy” financially and reduce costs. “Right now costs exceed revenue,” Musk reportedly said, adding: “That’s not a great situation.”
Launching the ‘everything app’
Musk tweeted to his more than 100 million followers on 4 October that buying Twitter was “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app”.
He didn’t give much more detail, other than that a Twitter takeover would accelerate X by up to five years. X, by the way, is the name for the corporate vehicles that Musk is using to buy Twitter.
However, this “everything app” appears to be inspired by China. In a meeting with Twitter staff in June, Musk said the platform should be more like the Chinese WeChat, an app that enables instant messaging, social media and mobile payment. According to the Verge, Musk said: “You basically live on WeChat in China. If we can recreate that with Twitter, we’ll be a great success.”
Raising revenue
Shortly after agreeing to buy the business this year, Musk had indicated he wanted to quintuple Twitter’s annual revenue to $26.4bn by 2028, according to the New York Times. Advertising accounts for 90% of Twitter’s revenue and Musk has raised a number of suggestions to generate turnover by other means.
Revenue-raising changes he has floated include: increasing the popularity of Twitter’s premium subscription service by making it ad-free; growing Twitter’s payments business; charging a “slight” fee for commercial and government users; and finding new ways to make money out of tweets that contain important information or go viral.
His financial backers will be looking for revenue growth, too. A consortium of banks is committed to raising $13bn in debt as part of the financing and the contributors to the more than $30bn in equity pledged by Musk will want the business to do well.
Tackle Twitter’s bot accounts
Musk has been adamant that the number of spam accounts on Twitter’s platform is bigger than the number stated by the company. He believes that the true number of vexatious, automated accounts on the platform is greater than the estimate given by Twitter of less than 5% of its monetisable daily active users(mDAU) – a key commercial metric for the company.
The Tesla chief cited the miscounting of spam accounts as central to his decision to walk away from the deal in July. He has promised to “authenticate” all humans on the platform, so expect some action on a problem that Twitter says he has overplayed.
Address concerns raised by whistleblower
Twitter’s former head of security, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, made a series of allegations about the company in a whistleblower complaint in August. He alleged interference by foreign governments, multiple information security failings and poor management. Twitter has accused Zatko of spreading a “false narrative about Twitter” and has said he was fired for “ineffective leadership and poor performance”.
Nonetheless, Musk was given permission to add Zatko’s allegations to a counterclaim against Twitter. His lawyers also interviewed Zatko as part of preparations for the lawsuit, which had been due to be heard in Delaware on 17 October – along with Twitter’s suit demanding that Musk buys the company. Both were instead adjourned while the deal went ahead.
An executive shake-up is also expected, and appears to be under way if the reports of Agrawal’s firing are correct.
Over the past few months, at a state school in the centre of Colombo, Sri Lanka, it has become common for children to faint in the middle of class. Students, coming from homes in the capital where parents can barely afford a meal a day, have been arriving at school quietly starving, as the country continues to grapple with the worst economic crisis since the great depression.
“Parents can’t afford the meat, eggs and milk that children need,” says Sandarenu Amarasiri, a teacher, adding that many were also missing school because financial hardship meant they could not afford transport, uniforms and shoes. This month, in an attempt to tackle the rampant hunger, the school began a programme giving basic lunch to students.
“Even we teachers try to give a meal to our students whenever we can,” she says. “But it is not easy with the prices of food.”
Since the beginning of the year, the once-thriving Sri Lanka has been brought to its knees. As a result of a series of disastrous economic decisions, compounded by corruption, the pandemic and the Ukraine war, the country found itself without any foreign currency reserves to import essential items, including food, fuel and medicines. Food shortages, blackouts and school closures have become the norm for the island’s 22 million people.
Many have warned that it is children bearing the brunt of the crisis. Food inflation has continued to rise, hitting a record 94.9% in September according to the Colombo Consumer Price Index, meaning parents have been unable to afford even basics such as rice and dal, while vegetables and meat have become unaffordable luxuries for many households.
Meal time in a Colombo slum; vegetables and meat have become unaffordable luxuries for many. Photograph: Eranga Jayawardena/AP
With 90% of people relying on state handouts, child malnutrition has soard across Sri Lanka. According to Save the Children, two-thirds of families are now struggling to feed themselves, while Unicef’s regional director for south Asia, George Laryea-Adjei, says that “children are going to bed hungry, unsure of where their next meal will come from”.
In Mahavita village in Yakkala, about 20 miles from Colombo, mothers speak despairingly of not being able to feed children. Wasanthi Jennifer, 43, a single mother to a 15-year-old son who earns a tiny income from a shop run out of her house, recently did not have enough money even for dal so foraged kohila leaves, a Sri Lankan herb, from the roadside to give her son lunch.
“It broke my heart to watch my son eat just kohila and rice,” says Jennifer. “He is a good boy. He eats whatever we have at home without complaining.” Sometimes my daughter feels faint and has bad stomach aches. But I am doing the best I can
Jennifer says they could no longer afford milk for tea, and she regularly went without breakfast. “I have to live by the day,” she says. She could also not afford another much-needed school uniform.
“As soon as he comes back, we wash it so that he can wear it the next day,” she says. “Last week, he didn’t go to school because his shoes were torn. I had to take a loan from a villager to buy him a new pair of shoes.”
The loan – 4,000 rupees ($10.94) – is more than double the cost of buying him shoes last year.
In Sri Lanka’s poverty-stricken regions in the north, parents have started leaving their children in care homes as they can no longer feed them. An official working in child protection in the northern province, who was not authorised to speak to the media, confirmed to the Guardian that “more and more parents are leaving their children in children’s homes because of financial issues … I have personally met parents who say that they can’t provide for their children any more.”
WA Susantha, 45, who used to have a fruit stall, displays the only food he has for the day. ‘With the drawn-out lockdowns and now this economic crisis I don’t have money to restart my stall.’ Photograph: Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
The 65m rupees in funding that the northern province child services used to receive has been cut, meaning that the authorities don’t have the means to step in and help families when finances are causing the problem. According to figures from the Department of Probation and Child Care Services, in the first six months of this year, 246 children in the northern region were sent to care homes, almost double the 146 children put into state care for the whole of 2021, a rise which local officials directly attributed to the economic crisis.
Experts say the long-term implications on child development could be severe, and damage Sri Lanka’s much-lauded literacy rate of 92%, which is the best in the region. Ishanka Maduwanthi, 34, another mother living in Yakkala near Colombo, says she could no longer afford the school fees to send her five-year-old son to school, and her nine-year-old daughter was also forced to regularly miss school when they couldn’t afford the bus fare or food for her. Her husband used to earn money as a daily wage earner but now all the work has dried up in the crisis.
Fish, milk and chicken have become distant memories, and now the family of four live off only rice, lentils and sambol, a simple dish made from grated coconut. If she can, Maduwanthi buys eggs twice a month in a effort to provide some protein to her children, but even that is a push for the family, and she recently had to rely on a donation of rice as she did not have the money to buy it herself.
“Sometimes my daughter feels faint and has bad stomach aches,” she says. “But I am doing the best I can.”
Sri Lanka post offices have increased the rates charged for paying electricity and water bills.
Accordingly, the amount of Rs. 05 previously charged for settling water bills via post offices will be increased to Rs. 20. Settling electricity bills via post offices will also require a charge of Rs. 20.
Earlier, the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) paid 02 per cent for the Department of Posts for electricity bills and the above revision was made given that the rate has now been slashed to 01 per cent, a statement by the Department said.
The move comes in due to the increased expenses at the Postal Department and the relevant circular in this regard has been forwarded to all postmasters, said Postmaster General Ranjith Ariyaratne.
Calling on Sri Lankan businesses to leverage the resumption of direct flights to Moscow to diversify the export basket, the Charge d’Affairs of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Sri Lanka Mr. Alexey Budanov, said Sri Lankan businesses should focus on emerging opportunities for bilateral cooperation with Russia.
Speaking on the occasion of the 19th Annual General Meeting of the Sri Lanka-Russia Business Council of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (SLRBC), Mr. Budanov emphasized that Russia would continue to support opportunities for trade between the two countries through the current challenging times.
The Keynote speaker, Chairman of the Sri Lanka Tea Board, Niraj De Mel echoed Mr. Budanov’s comments, highlighting the ‘ importance of enhancing the opportunities in tourism, coupled with tea such as tea tourism, and also implementing a way to import fertilizer and wheat from Russia.
Acknowledging the need for a stronger focus on bilateral trade, Kolitha Wickramasinghe, who was elected President of the SLRBC for 2022/23 said he would work ‘closely with the Export Development Board, Board of Investment and other relevant ministries to promote more business between Russia and Sri Lanka, in the areas of Tea, Travel, Tourism, etc.’
Mr. Buddhapriya Ramanayake, Managing Director, MOS Lanka Investments (Pvt) Ltd and Mr. Jude Fernando, Director, Rhino Roofing Products Ltd will serve as the Vice Presidents of the SLRBC for 2022/23 while, Mr. Hiran Karunaratne, Director, Regency Teas (Pvt) Ltd was re-appointed as the Treasure to the Council and Mr. Buddhika Liyanage, Director, Avian Technologies (Pvt) Ltd joined the committee in his capacity as the Immediate Past President.
The committee elected for the period 2022-2023 will be represented by; Ceylon Fresh Teas (Pvt) Ltd, Freight Links International (Pvt) Ltd, HVA Foods PLC, Kaushalya Tea Export Company, Millennium Teas (Pvt) Ltd, Nature’s Beauty Creations Ltd, Orofini Jewellers (Pvt) Ltd, Scanwell Logistics Colombo (Pvt) Ltd and Walkers Tours Ltd
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), in its annual financial report, has outlined a fund of USD 100 million for crisis-hit Sri Lanka.
The bank also pledged support for countries facing serious debt problems.
In addition, the AIIB is expected to announce a major support package for Pakistan at the upcoming COP summit following the country’s devastating floods.
Bijing-headquartered bank’s annual infrastructure finance report, published today (Oct. 27), lays out its stance for a difficult United Nations Climate Change COP 27 summit in Egypt next month.
It called for heavily-polluting state-owned firms to be rapidly turned into green energy “leaders”, putting special focus on China, India and Indonesia, noting that a global net-zero transition would not succeed without their cooperation.
The report called for pollution-cutting technologies to be shared globally and for countries to stop subsidising fossil fuels – something many have done this year as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent energy prices soaring – so that a “meaningful carbon price” can emerge and make investing in fossil fuels more costly.
The World Bank, Asian Development Bank and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank said they will work on a ‘joint action plan’ to help Sri Lanka during its latest currency crises, the worst in the history of its 72 year old central bank.
“All three institutions are adopting a co-ordinated approach to sustain basic services and livelihoods and to mitigate the impact of the economic crisis on the people of Sri Lanka,” the lenders said in a joint statement.
“This includes access to essential items such as medicines, cash assistance, gas and fertilizer through the reallocation of resources from existing projects.”
On May 19, Sri Lanka’s Treasury Secretary had convened a ‘Joint Co-ordinating Meeting’ with the AIIB, ADB and World Bank.
The World Bank, Asian Development Bank and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank said they will work on a ‘joint action plan’ to help Sri Lanka during its latest currency crises, the worst in the history of its 72 year old central bank.
“All three institutions are adopting a co-ordinated approach to sustain basic services and livelihoods and to mitigate the impact of the economic crisis on the people of Sri Lanka,” the lenders said in a joint statement.
“This includes access to essential items such as medicines, cash assistance, gas and fertilizer through the reallocation of resources from existing projects.”
On May 19, Sri Lanka’s Treasury Secretary had convened a ‘Joint Co-ordinating Meeting’ with the AIIB, ADB and World Bank.
Sri Lanka has left the regional payment mechanism Asian Clearing Union or ACU, prompting Bangladesh Bank to halt transactions with the crisis-hit neighbour.
In response to the self-motivated decision by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka to remain temporarily suspended from the ACU mechanism with effect from Oct 14, the Bangladesh Bank in a notice on Thursday asked all banks not to do any trade and trade-related transactions with Sri Lanka through the mechanism.
The central bank’s Foreign Exchange Policy Department issued a circular yesterday and sent it to top executives of banks, reports revealed.
The Asian Clearing Union (ACU) is an arrangement through which participating countries settle import payments for intra-regional transactions.
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka are members of the ACU, which has headquarters in Tehran. The central banks of the countries have to make payments every two months.
If any Bangladeshi bank wants to settle a transaction with a Sri Lankan commercial bank, it can do that by ignoring the ACU system, the report further said
Formed in 1974 in the initiative of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the Asian Clearing Union is a payment arrangement whereby the participants settle payments for intra-regional transactions among the participating central banks on a net multilateral basis.
The main objectives of the clearing union are to facilitate payments among member countries for eligible transactions, thereby economising on the use of foreign exchange reserves and transfer costs, as well as promoting trade and banking relations among the participating countries.
Besides Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, Bhutan, India, Iran, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and the Maldives are members of the ACU.
The members pay import bills to other members through the union every two months. Bangladesh is scheduled to make the next payments through the ACU in the first week of October.
Bangladesh remains hopeful that Sri Lanka will repay a debt of US$200 million that it owes to the country by March 2023, even as the economic crisis on the island continues and Colombo defaults on other loans.
The Governor of the Bangladesh Central Bank Abdur Rouf Talukder said he was “assured” by Central Bank of Sri Lanka Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe that the debt would be repaid after the pair met in Washington.
The loan from Bangladesh under a currency swap deal was supposed to be paid in three instalments in February and March 2023”, according to the Dhaka Tribune.
The deadline has already been extended twice according to Talukder.“We had a very good meeting,” he told reporters. “The governor assured me that they will meet the deadline for repayment. They are now restructuring their debts and have spoken to India, Japan and China about it.”
Earlier this year, Sri Lanka has announced preemptive default on its international debt obligations in April 2022 after failing to make a payment of approximately US$78m during its 30-day grace period.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has asked the Bangladesh Bank to withdraw the interest rate limit on loans and deposits as well as keep accounts of both net reserves and gross reserves.
