Courtesy The Daily Mirror

The country’s economy started to collapse with wrong policy decisions, Industries Minister Ramesh Pathirana said addressing the panel discussion of the Sri Lanka Ceramics and Glass Council yesterday.

The discussion was on the quality, affordability and self-reliance of the sanitaryware industry.
We are a people who maintain a lifestyle that we cannot afford as a country and personally, we used to spend as much as we could,” he noted.

The Minister said the country started collapsing after massive amounts of debt were added to the country due to the above characteristics.

He said the wrong policy decisions that were made regarding borrowing and non-borrowing debt also caused the country to end up in the current situation.

“The Government has to pay an annual trade balance of 10 billion USD, including 22 billion USD on imports and 10 or 12 billion USD from exports.

With the open economy of the country since 1977, the current debt has become unsustainable,” he said.
“We are wrong. We took a decision that should not have been taken in principle. That is the fact that we will not borrow again. There was another decision made with the fact that we would not take loans again.
If there is something that can be produced in this country, a decision was taken to support the production of it -both in agriculture and industry. However, this improvement was lost in this critical situation of the country, ” he said.

He said after the current Government came to office, it had stopped importing vehicles as USD 2 billion was spent annually on importing vehicles into the country.

“We knew that the country was going to face foreign exchange issues and that there was a vehicle assembling industry in the country which could be developed. Therefore, a decision was taken to introduce a long-term policy to the automobile industry,” the Minister said. (Chaturanga Samarawickrama)