The Framework for Economic Development Master Plan for the long term growth and development of the Northern Province was launched last Friday by the Minister of Finance and Mass Media Mangala Samaraweera.
Gracing the event, Managala Samaraweera, Minister of Finance and Mass Media said that this is an important document that concerns for the long term development of the Northern Province. “The Ministry of Finance initiated many plans to uplift the economy of North over the past few years by addressing a range of issues.” The Budget plan of 2018 allocated over 12 million rupees to initiate over 20 projects. The government has also issued an annual interest rate of 35% to take free micro finance loans. Through ‘Enterprise Sri Lanka’, skilled entrepreneurs get the chance to apply for low interest loan schemes. The Treasury had allocated 5.2 billion rupees last year for this scheme and this year an additional 4 billion rupees have been allocated. Economic centers were built for the benefit of the farmers in the Northern Province and last year 250 million rupees worth grain storage was also inaugurated. Along with ‘Gamperaliya’ 5000 million rupees worth of projects were initiated to develop the Jaffna and Vanni electoral districts. “These are few examples of projects funded by the government to support war affected people of the North.” Samaraweera also said that the upcoming budget also contains such development projects which prioritize the future policies which will replace the decade long damages done by the war. The time has arrived for the Northern Province to transform reconciliation oriented programs to long term development plans. He further added.
The main problem faced by the people of North is the debt stress. “We were able to gain a better understanding of the dimensions of problems. We met number of social communities including women organizations, stakeholders, representatives of financial institutions and public officials.” said Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Indrajit Coomaraswamy. The reason for indebtedness was the lack of productive employment. A clear strategy needs to be there to overcome the unemployment in the northern. He further said that the Ministry of Finance should take the leadership to put this framework into action and get frequent feedback.
“It needs a more fresh and unique approach to address the post war socio economic challenges of the province.” said, Chair of the Framework Committee, B. Sivatheepan. The independent committee consisting of professionals and academics of Northern Province voluntarily served for eight months during 2018 to prepare the document of the Framework. In the Northern context indebtedness is severe with the consequences of the war. According to the recent statistics, the level of poverty has increased where as the level of nutrition has decreased. The framework observed that the post war reconciliation strategies have not met the expected level of success holistic and sustainable level of economic growth. The reasons identified are, lack of reconstruction strategies for the Northern economy, insufficient investment for technology transference and continuing fragility of population coming out of war which provides a barrier for their participation in the development.
In order to answer for these issues arisen, the framework supports three main contributions. Highlighting the development issues and challenges prevailing in north, Reports which provides the perspectives from north and Overlooking and taking holistic micro view of the economy and provide directions for the development of economy of north. Guided by the national policy in support of the United Nation’s sustainable goals, the framework is supporting the sustainable development of the province and is supporting selected products like Palmyrah for export development to rearrange the potential of the North to contribute for the National economy.
Hence these lay the foundation for building a strong province which could contribute for the success for the Nation in long term. “This document is the first of its kind of the Northern province.” he added.
“There are unique challenges that require special policies.” said, Member of the Framework Committee, Ahilan Kadirgamar. The framework is structured around three pillars; The factors of production, Enabling environment and social foundations of development. These set of priorities of the north have to be integrated in to the upcoming budget as this is a long term initiative.
“It’s a decade since the end of the war but now we are looking for the next decade.” Much more resources are needed and government priority and importance is needed in creating a master plan like this since all the committee members worked voluntarily for an entire year. He further said.
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