The Govt has laid a sound foundation for the economy to withstand shocks of the nature that country faced on Sunday. Nonetheless, there will be an impact on the tourism sector even though it is now off-season Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera told Parliament yesterday.
The Sri Lankan economy was on a steady path of recovery following a series of natural disasters in the form of droughts and floods in 2016/2017, and a man-made disaster the political crisis of 2018, he said.
“We had stabilized the economy as inflation was brought down to 2.9% by March 2019, the trade deficit declined to its lowest level in over 5 years in February, accordingly the rupee has appreciated by 4.5% - the 3rd best performing currency in the world in 2019. Our foreign reserves stand at US$ 7.7 billion - covering over 4 months of import requirements. Interest rates have declined by over 100 basis points this year as fiscal consolidation delivered results with a 0.6% primary budget surplus in 2018,” he said.
The tourist industry has had long experience of protecting visitors even through a 30-year war, and there is no doubt the sector will bounce back, he said.
“We have taken significant measures to support tourism through policy interventions in the budget, and also outside of the budget such as the visa waiver. We will discuss with the industry to identify further measures to support them through this challenging period.
We could also see some stresses in FDI and portfolio investment in the short term. In both instances, I urge investors to focus on the macroeconomic fundamentals which are, as I have outlined, very sound. Sri Lanka’s investment proposition remains very compelling.
We have taken pro-active measures to refinance external debt in the first quarter of this year, and have already completed large external debt repayments in January and April. This is NOT the time to point fingers. This is NOT the time to score political points and manipulate the emotions of our people by misleading and confusing them. This is the time to introspect,” he said.
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