Economy Forward

The  COPF's (Parliamentary  Committee on Public Finance) recent discussions and investigations on t he new Public Debt Management Office (PDMO)   reveal that both the COPF and the government have no knowledge on economic and financial fundamentals of the debt and the likely role of the PDMO. Therefore, the COPF seems to be criticizing the PDMO almost on daily basis for its incapacity to manage the mountain of debt inherited from the Central Bank at the end of 2025.  This debt stock which is claimed to be unsustainable is a cumulative result of the Central Bank managing the debt as part of its monetary policy since 1950. Therefore, the COPF has forgotten that the Central Bank defaulted debt in April 2022 resulting the then politics to decide to transfer of the mismanaged debt stock to the PDMO for better management despite its mismanaged legacy of risks and issues where the COPF expects the PDMO to do all wonders to make the debt stock sustainable. The COPF's investig...

  Article's background and purpose These days, the social media is full of information revealed by responsible authorities on significant delays and defiance of law and order to the general public. It is also stated that the state's monopoly of the supply of law and order is the power of the general public carried out by the state for the benefit of the general public. Meantime, the brutal incidence reported in the Negombo prison, although not a new to the state prison management being a core pillar of the law and order, exploded the pathetic condition of the law and order provided by the state. This has happened in the time when the state has pronounced its readiness to protect the rule of law in both letter and sprit. However, underlying stories show the sheer inability of the state to protect lives of both inmates and state officials of the prison system, which is the core of the judiciary system. The state's negligence in stocking of inmates four times the capacity (i.e...

  Article's background and purpose During last few months, an extensive debate has taken place whether the central bank's bank supervision function has failed in early detection of the NDB bank fraud and resolution of the same. In contrast, the central bank management has been firmly responding that bank supervision is a prudential supervisory model and, therefore, not responsible for bank fraud risks for which bank management is responsible under Corporate Governance Directions. By listening to this never resolvable debate, given my long standing involvement in the bank supervision function of the previous central bank under the Monetary Law Act (MLA), I feel that the present central bank talks about a revised or lightly touched bank supervision model operating under the Central Bank of Sri Lanka Act of 2023 certified on 14 September 2023. The reason for my impression is that the previous bank supervision officers definitely would have early detected a bank fraud of  such a m...