The government is on keen to improve on the Ease of Doing Business index for Sri Lanka and will even go to the extent of introducing new legislation in this regard, said Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
He was speaking at the IOSCO Growth and Embarking Markets Committee conference at Cinnamon Grand Colombo, yesterday. The Premier also said that even the Thai government has introduced new laws in this regard.
The Prime Minister said that the macroeconomic stabilization program which was also approved by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was put into place and today the country has the revenue for debt servicing.
Premier Wickremesinghe said that since 2006, successive governments have been investing heavily on infrastructure but today these investments are not bringing in expected returns.
“This is why we decided to sign a joint venture agreement with China Merchants Port Holdings to lease out the Hambantota Port. This will bring in US$ 1.1 billion as a fee and also US$ 600 million as infrastructure. We are also looking at a similar lease deal for the Mattala Airport to have it off the government liability records by next year. The Colombo Port City too would bring in huge capital to the country,” the Prime Minister said.
Prime Minister Wickremesinghe said that Sri Lanka’s debt servicing would be at its peak in 2018 and 2019 and the government would be able to completely settle national debt before 2020. “I will leave a debt free nation by 2020 as I don’t want to pass it on to the next generation,” he said.
He said that Sri Lanka was always looking at the problem of climate change in the country as the nation was dependent on agriculture and hydroelectric power generation. “But now we are looking at a climate change economy to move the country forward where services and manufacturing and tourism sectors would play bigger roles. Too much of emphasis has been given to non-tradable sectors previously and this too should change direction.”
The Prime Minister said that the growth of the capital markets is welcomed and in the future it may even improve to the point where stock exchanges would completely disappear and people would be using hand-held devices to access markets.
Meanwhile Malaysian Securities Commission Chairman Ranjit Ajit Singh said that capital markets have played key roles in the development of the Malaysian economy. “Over 70% of capital for infrastructure projects was raised from them,” he said.
IOSCO Asia Pacific Regional Committee Chairman Jun Mizuguchi said that with the growth of mobile and ICT usage in stock exchanges all over the world, cyber security threats should be looked at more seriously.
The event will also have close door sessions to formulate steps that should be taken to curb cyber security threats to the markets today.
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