The long-awaited moment arrived today as the renovated railway line from Anuradhapura to Omantai was officially inaugurated for public transportation. The project, made possible through an upgrade initiative funded by an Indian line of credit, has transformed the 48.5 km Anuradhapura-Vavuniya line into a modern and efficient transportation route.
Minister Bandula Gunawardena, while announcing the launch, highlighted the significant improvements made to the railway line. Notably, air-conditioned luxury carriages were introduced during the test run, allowing passengers to enjoy a comfortable journey at a remarkable speed of 100 kilometers per hour.
The upgrade project has not only enhanced the overall infrastructure of the railway line but has also contributed to improving the connectivity and convenience for commuters. The introduction of air-conditioned carriages brings a touch of luxury to the travel experience, ensuring a pleasant and enjoyable journey for passengers.
The Anuradhapura to Omantai railway line upgrade project marks a significant milestone in the region’s transportation sector. The collaboration between Sri Lanka and India has not only strengthened bilateral ties but has also paved the way for enhanced connectivity and improved transportation options for the public.
In a press conference held at the Ministry of Finance, State Minister of Finance Ranjith Siyambalapitiya affirmed the government’s commitment to alleviating the current tax burden faced by the people. Siyambalapitiya assured that necessary measures would be promptly undertaken to relieve taxpayers and emphasized that the government had no intentions of imposing additional burdens on them.
Siyambalapitiya stated, “We are determined to engage in discussions and swiftly reduce this burden at the earliest opportunity.”
Regarding Sri Lanka’s economic progress, the State Minister highlighted a substantial growth rate of 38.1% from January to May of the current year, compared to 2022. He further provided specific figures, stating that tax revenue had increased by 44.9%, income tax by 53.6%, Goods and Services tax by 65.6%, and taxes on foreign trade had decreased by 12.2%. Siyambalapitiya clarified that the decline in taxes on foreign trade was not attributed to any fault on the part of Customs but rather the result of restrictions on the importation of certain goods to stabilize the country’s economic state.
Additionally, Siyambalapitiya acknowledged that total expenses had risen by 47.8%, primarily due to the implementation of welfare schemes and subsidy grants.
Overall, the State Minister’s remarks reassured the public that the government was committed to addressing the tax burden and taking necessary actions to alleviate it while highlighting the country’s economic progress and the factors contributing to the current state of taxation.
Several spells of showers will occur in Western, Sabaragamuwa and North-western provinces and in Kandy, Nuwara-Eliya, Galle and Matara districts.
Showers or thundershowers will occur at a few places in Uva province and in Ampara and Batticaloa districts during the evening or night.
Fairly strong winds about (40-45) kmph can be expected at times in Northern and North-Central provinces, and in Puttalam, Hambantota and Trincomalee districts.
General public is kindly requested to take adequate precautions to minimize damages caused by temporary localized strong winds and lightning during thundershowers.
Colombo (LNW): The tax policy advisory of the Finance Ministry has given assurance to the business community that if there is no proper refunding mechanism in place, the removal of the Simplified Value-Added Tax (SVAT) scheme may not take place in January 2024, the National Chamber of Exporters (NCE) said.
The assurance was given by Finance Ministry Tax Policy Advisor W. Thanuja A. Perera, the NCE said in a press release that was based on a panel discussion it hosted on SVAT, recently.
According to the NCE, Perera has shared while addressing the panel discussion that the authorities are working on a mechanism to make sure that the exporters are protected via a refunding mechanism, following the termination of SVAT.
“Refund is part and parcel of the VAT mechanism. Currently, we are in a situation where we need to have more revenue mobilized,” Perera was quoted as saying.
While noting that the removal of SVAT is in the drafting stage, Perera had pointed out that there was no VAT mechanism in any other country without refunds.
Meanwhile, discussions were also held on whether the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) needs to issue credit vouchers to Customs for the VAT amount payable at the point of import, under the Temporary Import for Export Processing n(TIEP) scheme.
In June, the Cabinet of Ministers announced the decision to rationalize the VAT exemptions and abolish the SVAT scheme.
The exporters across diverse industries responded to the move stating that the SVAT removal would be detrimental. VAT was introduced in April 2011 to address the fraud and corruption that arose due to the delays in VAT refunds to the manufacturers supplying to exporters, providers of specified services to exporters and many other taxpayers.
The NCE highlighted that prior to the implementation of the SVAT system, the exporters, who had refunds from the IRD, suffered due to the inefficiencies of the tax office to process refunds in a timely manner. Some refunds to exporters dragged up to about 18 months.
Due to massive refund build-ups in the past, the room opened for fraud and corruption in relation to VAT refunds as well, the NCE pointed out.
AMNESTY: The Government of Sri Lanka must ensure access to adequate nutrition for all pregnant and breastfeeding women amid the ongoing economic crisis in the country, Amnesty International said today in a new research briefing.
The briefing, ‘Foregoing Meals to Make-Do’, examines the impact of the economic crisis on access to nutrition for pregnant and breastfeeding women, with a particular focus on women living below the poverty line in Colombo. Falling incomes, loss of livelihoods and inflation have reduced women’s purchasing power while government-funded programs aimed at increasing maternal nutrition have also been affected by the crisis.
“Due to the severity of the economic crisis in Sri Lanka, health and nutrition have taken a back seat. The situation has taken a grave toll on the health and well-being of pregnant and breastfeeding women. These individuals have also been disproportionately impacted by the crisis, which has seen poverty rates double in the space of a year due to the crisis,” said Dinushika Dissanayake, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for South Asia.
Amnesty International interviewed 45 people for this briefing, including healthcare workers, members of civil society, and pregnant and breastfeeding women from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds, all of whom live in informal settlements and tenement blocks in Colombo.
‘We somehow try to forgo a meal’
The women Amnesty International spoke to raised concerns about the unaffordability of food, the inconsistent supply of ‘Thriposha’ food supplements, and the inability to redeem food vouchers offered through government programs.
Pregnant and breastfeeding women said they aimed to “fill their stomach” rather than consume recommended daily amounts of variety of nutrients due to the high cost of food. In order to have three meals a day, many opted to limit portion sizes, while some reduced their number of daily meals to two. One breastfeeding woman told Amnesty International: “We eat breakfast and dinner and try to skip lunch… We eat a biscuit for lunch with a cup of tea.”
In almost all households Amnesty International spoke to, consumption of meat, vegetables, fruit and milk had drastically reduced. Such deprivation increases the risk of nutrient deficiencies, which can affect the development of the foetus. Families that previously consumed meat or fish on a weekly basis now consume them just once a month or only when money is available. Another breastfeeding woman said: “We can’t afford milk-inducing food. You see fish is expensive. So, we buy what we can afford for the money we have.”
Most pregnant and breastfeeding women Amnesty International spoke to said that they were unemployed and their husbands did not have a regular income amid the economic crisis.
In February 2023, pregnant and breastfeeding told Amnesty International that government food vouchers, which are usually offered to pregnant and breastfeeding women, could not be redeemed due to a lack of state funds.
Amnesty International wrote to the Ministry of Women, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Public Administration to raise these concerns, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
‘We have to see patients suffering’
Sri Lanka’s public health system has also been affected by shortages of medicine and equipment. Health workers providing maternal care told Amnesty International that they had to stop, delay or postpone non-essential surgeries and procedures. One doctor, who said they have to ration drugs for emergency cases because future supplies are uncertain, told Amnesty: “We have to see patients suffering and we cannot do anything.”
Amnesty found that health workers reused equipment or told patients to purchase medicine or equipment from private pharmacies because state-run hospitals had run out. Meanwhile, medicines in private pharmacies remain unaffordable to most due to price hikes and the devaluation of the Sri Lankan Rupee.
Sri Lanka has ratified several international accords requiring it to ensure that pregnant and breastfeeding women have access to adequate healthcare and food, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).
“Prolonged food insecurity and inadequate nutrition can lead to serious long-term consequences for mothers and their children if left unaddressed. The Government of Sri Lanka must urgently meet its international human rights obligations, including by ensuring access to adequate, affordable and good quality nutrition for pregnant and breastfeeding women. The international community must also play a role in supporting the government to ensure pregnant and breastfeeding women are able to access adequate food and nutrition,” said Dinushika Dissanayake.
On July 13, 2022, many streets in Colombo – Sri Lanka’s capital – erupted into celebration after weeks of peaceful protests forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country. Rajapaksa, long implicated in war crimes when he was defense secretary, had presided over an economic catastrophe amid allegations of widespread corruption and impunity.
But a year later, despite some superficial changes, there is no sustained improvement in the country’s economic situation that impinges many people’s human rights. The acute shortage of fuel that was the most visible feature of the economic crisis has eased. But more than six million people – nearly 30 percent of the population – are food-insecure and require humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations. Seventeen percent of children under age five have stunted growth.
Meanwhile, the new president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, has used the police and military to crack down on protests. While the previous government had announced a moratorium on the use of the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act, Wickremesinghe used the law to detain student protest leaders.
A revised counterterrorism law proposed by the new administration would have handed sweeping powers to the police, the military, and the president and created a set of new speech-related offenses. The government was forced to pause the legislation amid widespread outrage, but authorities are nevertheless using other laws to clamp down on free speech.
The government also continues to pursue abusive policies against minorities, such as “land grabs” in the north and east, targeting Tamil and Muslim-owned land, including places of worship, on a variety of pretexts.
Tamils seeking to memorialize people who died in Sri Lanka’s 1983-2009 civil war are subject to intimidation and banning orders. Relatives of victims of enforced disappearance, who are campaigning for truth and accountability, are kept under surveillance by the intelligence agencies. Minorities in the north and east face restrictions on expression and association far greater than in the rest of the country.
Sri Lanka remains in an economic, political, and human rights crisis. President Wickremesinghe should recognize that upholding rights and pursuing accountability for grave crimes is essential to addressing the country’s problems.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) alerts on a new threat to press freedom in China: a new smartphone service designed to “train” and even evaluate journalists on the regime’s propaganda as well as to “help” them pass the test of loyalty to Chinese leader Xi Jinping has just been launched.
The All-China Journalists Association (ACJA), an organisation overseen by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), recently launched a smartphone service, available on the WeChat platform, designed to “train” media professionals in the “Marxist vision of journalism”, a concept that defines the CCP doctrine on media.
The service introduced on 30 June features at least 220 courses, and is aimed at “helping” journalists pass the loyalty exam to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, which is compulsory to obtain or renew press credentials since 2019. It is able to track users’ progress and issue training certifications, and it could also be used by media outlets to conduct journalists’ annual reviews.
“Over the past decade, the Chinese regime has been conducting a true crusade against press freedom and the right to information, and this new smartphone service is yet another tool to brainwash and compel journalists to conform with state narratives. The international community should build up pressure on the Chinese regime to deter it from continuing its repressive policies and restore press freedom as enshrined in the country’s constitution.”
Cédric Alviani RSF East Asia Bureau Director
In 2019, the regime launched a smartphone propaganda app available for the general public called “Study Xi, strengthen the country”, which was also later used to test journalists’ loyalty to the regime and their knowledge of its narrative.
Since Chinese leader Xi Jinping took power in 2012, he has further tightened control of the Chinese state media, which are expected to “reflect the Party’s will,” while initiating a violent clampdown on independent journalists and applying unprecedented censorship and surveillance online, as revealed in RSF’s report The Great Leap Backwards of Journalism in China.
To support journalists working on China issues, RSF launched the training.rsf.org website in 2021, which covers physical safety, digital security, mental health, and reporting best practices, alongside its ambitious capacity-building and assistance programme that has already benefited more than 500 journalists covering China.
China ranks 179th out of 180 in the 2023 RSF World Press Freedom Index and is the world’s largest captor of journalists and press freedom defenders.
Colombo (LNW): Technical Standards prepared by Japan,called Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting: ISDB-T is designed to provide reliable high-quality video, sound, and data broadcasting not only for fixed receivers but also for mobile receiver have been presented to Sri Lanka . Japanese ISDB-T is one of the most used digital TV standards in the world.
Japanese Ambassador Mizukoshi Hideaki handed over the Technical Standards prepared by Japan to Mass Media Minister Bandula Gunawardana in the presence of JICA Sri Lanka Chief Representative Tetsuya Yamada; Ministry Secretary Anusha Palpita and Additional Secretary E.M.S.B. Jayasundara.
Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) together with the Ministry of Mass Media is strongly committed to the digitalization of terrestrial television broadcasting in Sri Lanka which will significantly improve the quality of the broadcasting and the capacity of the digital space in Sri Lanka.
JICA is fully utilizing and coordinating their available schemes including Loan, Technical Cooperation Project and Public-Private Partnership to provide total support from the distributing side to the receiving side for the successful shift to terrestrial digital broadcasting.
The terrestrial digital broadcasting will realize the diverse services and effective use of frequencies which enhance the development of other purposes such as E-education, Intelligent Transport Service, Intelligent Security Systems, etc.
During the ceremony, Minister Gunawardena welcomed the participants and accepted with gratitude the Technical Standard prepared by Japan, and he received the Standard from Japanese Ambassador.
The Secretary said that this is symbolic ODA on-going project, and this digital technology will save the future of broadcast. He mentioned that this project is very important for Sri Lanka and happy to know that Japan is committed to this project.
Japanese Ambassador emphasized that this DTTB project will open many benefits to Sri Lankan viewers such as watching high-definition picture quality television, also it is extremely important to strengthen information and communication technology for implementing the digital economy. He requested all stakeholders to continue efforts in this program.
Colombo (LNW): In a groundbreaking move to introduce positive change and enhance Sri Lanka’s economic standing, the Chamber of Young Lankan Entrepreneurs (COYLE) has presented a comprehensive proposal aimed at laying the groundwork for stable policies and attracting quality investments.
COYLE’s visionary plan, backed by extensive research and comparative analysis, focuses on key areas of concern and offers innovative solutions to overcome challenges and drive long-term prosperity.
The proposals have been officially handed over to Member of Parliament Madura Vithanage who has agreed to convey the contents with the necessary channels in Parliament.
Young MP and Attorney-at-Law Withanage is the Chairman of the Select Committee of Parliament to study the practical problems and difficulties that have arisen in relation to enhancing the rank in the Ease of Doing Business Index and make its proposals and recommendations.
Expressing his support of COYLE’s proposals, MP Vithanage said: “ A program will be formulated within the next 3 months to solve the problems of businesses in the country.
Leveraging the expertise of diverse professionals, COYLE seeks to forge a path towards a more efficient and effective governance structure.
It acknowledges the positive economic conditions in the country, but emphasises the importance of addressing the loss of credibility resulting from defaulting on obligations.
To regain trust and attract quality investments, COYLE highlights the necessity for stable policies that offer a proactive approach, rather than merely reacting to crises.
By setting clear timelines, introducing self-compliance capabilities for new investors, and upgrading standards to eliminate ambiguity, Sri Lanka can establish itself as a reliable and trustworthy investment destination.
Additionally, COYLE’s proposals stress the need to revisit existing laws, with a particular focus on dispute resolution and accountability. Currently, the absence of liability when ministers change policies on an ad hoc basis, and the lack of law and order, pose significant challenges.
COYLE also calls for personal accountability for ministers and government institutions, urging the enactment of laws that hold them liable for any damage caused.
COYLE’s proposal reflects the needs at a pivotal moment for Sri Lanka’s economic future. By championing stability, accountability and proactive decision-making, COYLE aims to capitalise on the country’s potential, re-foster an environment of trust for investors to attract high-quality, long-term investments.
“The road ahead may be challenging, but with the collective efforts of passionate individuals and the support of all stakeholders, COYLE firmly believes that Sri Lanka can chart a course towards prosperity,” a statement said.
Colombo (LNW):Saudi Arabia has launched the Skill Verification Program (SVP) in Sri Lanka as part of a scheme to attract more skilled workers from the island nation, foreign media reported.
The program has been initiated by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development (MHRSD) under its Professional Accreditation Program.
Sri Lankans are hopeful that a new employment scheme with Saudi Arabia will help ease their country’s economic crisis, professionals and labor officials said adding that , they expect it to boost the nation’s manpower exports to the Kingdom.
Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka recently signed an agreement on the Skill Verification Program which aims to improve the professional competence of employees in the Saudi labor market and streamline the recruitment process of skilled workers from the island nation.
Under the deal — which covers 23 professions, including electricians and auto mechanics — Saudi employers will recognize accreditations issued by Sri Lanka’s Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission.
“The TVEC has embarked on the assessment process where Saudi Arabia would tell us their manpower needs and Sri Lanka would choose the right candidates for the right courses,” commission director, Dr. Lalithadheera K. Arachchige, said.
For many years, Sri Lankan professionals have been working in Saudi Arabia without recognition of their professional certification and often enrolled in jobs below their qualifications. The new deal is expected to change that.
Abdul Nazar, managing director of Colombo-based recruitment company Air Kings Group who used to work in Jeddah, said Saudi Arabia had previously not recognized professionals from Sri Lanka “unless they have gone through the technical skill tests processed by the Saudi government.”
According to Saudi Gazette, workers in five professions, namely plumbers, electricians, refrigeration/air conditioning technicians, automobile mechanics and automobile electricians were selected for skill testing in the first phase of the external track of the program.
The first phase of the program plans to verify the skills of workers in five specializations out of 23 specialization targeted by the ministry, with the aim of improving the quality of professional manpower in the Saudi labour market and raising the level of professionalism.
Through this program, the Saudi government will enhance productivity, and halt the flow of unqualified professional labour into the kingdom’s labour market.
The objective of the program is to verify that workers in the targeted professions possess the necessary skills through two tracks – internal and international.
The first track aims to examine the skills of professional workers currently in the Kingdom and that is in cooperation with local examination centres, while the second track aims to examine professional labour before their arrival, and that is in cooperation with a number of accredited international examination centres.
The Saudi ministry has launched the program in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. The SVP was introduced in July 2021 as part of regulating its labour market in the best possible manner.
