Vallibel One Group Managing Director Dhammika Perera called on policymakers to implement targeted lockdowns at Grama Niladari level rather than at district level.
Perera was speaking as part of the Sampath Securities Webinar on the Post COVID economy on May10.
Advisor to Prime Minister Nivard Cabraal said that he was not pleased with the implementation of moratoriums. He said that they were too slow and did not reach all the banks and finance companies.
On the stock exchange Cabraal said, “for the market to be credible it must be open.”
Cabraal and Perera called on for quick elections so that the authority of the government was clear. Cabraal noted that over Rs 135 billion of credit card debt was outstanding and this was a rising concern for the government.
Cabraal defended any money printing activity by the Central Bank. He said “I am not saying it is a life and death matter when you print money. During my period it isn’t that we didn’t have excess printing but every time the treasury secretary asked me if we could accommodate the government with an excess of treasury bills I always got a date by which it was settled. We made sure that was settled. It’s like a good bank manager.”
Cabraal said that Sri Lanka’s food security was now under some concern as the supplier countries have decided to increase their buffer stocks in response to the crisis.
Perera was of the view that Sri Lanka only exports processed food items. He said that foreign countries for the sake of food security heavily subsidize local industrialization of agriculture. Perera cited India as providing 133 percent of grants for food processing businesses. Perera noted that for agriculture to grow in Sri Lanka they would have to seek export markets.
Perera has financed a trilingual mathematics tutorial scheme on YouTube. He felt that Sri Lankans overestimate the quality of their workforce by looking at the high literacy rate.
Perera cited Sri Lanka’s functional literacy (capacity to undertake skilled work) rate at 38 percent.
Perera noted that 80 percent of incarcerated citizens had received education below the 8th Grade Level. Perera said as a society the society was fuelling disparity with such poor education outcomes across the population spectrum.
He said that the government had brought down foreign cows with no capacity to feed them.
He said that small farms were not structured in a manner suitable to tend for foreign cattle with their requirements for types of grass and climate.
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