Everything Them IMF Don’t Want to Hear!
Posted on July 30th, 2023

e-Con e-News

Before you study the economics, study the economists!

e-Con e-News August 2023 Part 1

The shortest route to London from Paris is through Calcutta

– Napoleon Bonaparte

India’s Defence Acquisition Council bought for its Navy: 26 more Rafale fighter jets & 3 more Scorpene submarines ‘worth 1000s of crores’, from France, just as Indian PM N Modi landed in Paris on July 13. The Indian Navy says it needs at least 18 submarines to carry out its ‘full spectrum of operations’. France is India’s 2nd-largest arms supplier.

     Then the French President suddenly appears in Colombo, with a large contingent of bureaucratic foreign legionnaires. Not quite Napoleon invading Egypt in 1798 with an eye on England’s jambu in Sri Lanka and India. But then the Japan’s FM arrives, also with an ample retinue. India’s Tata Chair Natarajan Chandrasekaran had already arrived in Colombo to do some SoE shopping and left. The sky appears filled with a plague of fleas. (see ee Random Notes)

     Earlier this year, France started violently evicting Comoros people from Mayotte, whose strategic spread between Mozambique & Madagascar, blocks access to the Mozambique channel (ee April 2023 P2). When Comoros declared independence in 1974, France grabbed Mayotte from Comoros, and assassinated their socialist leader.

     So, instead of arresting French President E Macron who arrived in Sri Lanka after casing France’s colonized territories in the Indian & Pacific Oceans (isn’t colonialism illegal yet, Mr & Ms International Criminal Court? And you, Mr & Ms UN Human Rights Commission?), an obsequious media, clearly franchised by some francs (oops, euros) unanimously headlined his arrival: ‘historic’ – as if a colonized EU could protect us from their colonial master, the USA, and from a colonial-era Himalayan outpost!

     Macron was apparently fleeing sparked workers in France itself, after stealing their pensions. The so-called ‘riots’ are perhaps a fire wall (erected by those people who gave us the French word, agent-provocateur!). Maybe Macron passed on some advice to Sri Lanka’s President, who is also clawing at workers’ pensions. France has been assigned the role of ‘good cop’, as opposed to the USA’s bad cop, a role earlier played by Scandinavians (Norway) and other Arcticians (Canada), etc.

*

• The World Bank’s Country Director for Sri Lanka, with a fancy double-barrel name, got together with the Sri Lanka Press Institute at the Hilton Colombo (which is about to be sold off) to tell us that economic recovery is on its way. The World Bank is also providing $200million (is it cash or more expensive US goods?) to win friends, beat off enemies and buy off the rest, while cutting of any social safety net and smoothing the IMF’s way to their 17th false panacea (see ee Economy, Cabinet Nod).

     ee also draws attention to the goings on at SLTelecom, which is yet to respond to reports of being bribed to abandon Asian plans for submarine internet cables. The World Bank has been put in charge of selling off this purportedly profitable national enterprise. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s new Data Protection Authority has put into operation by President Ranil Wickremesinghe as Minister of Technology.

     This ee Focus therefore continues our recall of the entry of the English & the USA into the Indian & Pacific oceans, through their lucrative trade in opium, and more interestingly, where the US chose to invest such loot (training workers, railways, telegraph, telecoms, etc). Therefore also providing a micro history of telegraphy and underwater cabling, linking Sri Lanka.

*

The IMF does not want to hear the word industrialization

within the walls of their IMF building’

– see ee Focus

• This ee, in response to the IMF ban, reproduces some of the very absorbing contributions at a recent Gamani Corea Foundation’s Innovators Forum on Industrial Development, with recently deposed Central Banker governor WD Lakshman, policy analyst Vagisha Gunasekera, former CEO of Ceylon Development Engineering Co Sunil Abhayawardhana, and Dhammika Fernando, chair of the Free Trade Zone Manufacturers Association. Led by economists Bram and Howard Nicholas, the Forum dealt with the heights and lows of Sri Lanka’s industrial possibilities and policies most vital – if we do not wish to kneel before the IMF for an 18th time… (see ee Focus)

     SBD de Silva, to whom this blog is dedicated, always called for a national conversation on the real meaning of industrialization – quite aware that the colonized media would never allow such a discussion.

     ee was therefore excited that the Forum sought to flesh out, what exactly industrialization is, and even better, examined the paths through the inevitable obstructions. The challenges in building real industry are indeed fearsome, yet all this could be overcome: For what is most lacking is not financing, etc. – as is usually trotted out along with a plethora of negatives, small market, etc. – but a lack of will!

     Even more, as pointed out by some participants, our permanent government (no, not politicians, but bureaucrats & related importer-exporters) has little idea about real industrialization and see the world like petty traders through just ‘money’ rather than ‘capital’…

     The most interesting revelations at the Forum are the IMF’s vicious opposition to modern industrialization in Sri Lanka, and how industrialized capitalist countries have always blocked industrial up-and-comers.

     The Forum focused on Export-Oriented Industrialization, of which ee has repeatedly been critical. External trade is dominated by imperialist nation-state promoted multinational corporations, and not just because the leading capitalist nation, the USA, and their EU poodles are weaponizing access to their markets. The Forum was however a clear beginning, and we hope that the Gamani Corea Foundation, etc, despite the glittering inducements available to economists who toe the IMF line, will with others, continue and widen this crucial conversation.

     There is clearly great need to do so. There is much confusion, not only because the powers that be have media machines that pump out heavy fog on the clearest of days…

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

 

 


Copyright © 2024 LankaWeb.com. All Rights Reserved. Powered by Wordpress