DEW says most countries struggling to overcome worst-ever economic crisis

… frowns on tax concessions to businesses

By Rathindra Kuruwita

Former General Secretary of the Communist Party, D.E.W. Gunasekera yesterday said three reasons had triggered Sri Lanka’s current economic crisis, which is considered the worst ever since Independence.

“There is a global economic crisis, and we are affected by it. Prices of most goods we import have gone up, and this is beyond our control. On the other hand, COVID-19 too has affected us immensely. Once production and transportation are affected prices go up,” he said.

Gunasekera said that there was also a global financial crisis and most countries were simply printing money to overcome it. The United States had printed trillions of dollars during the last two years and recently the US Congress had increased its debt ceiling by another two trillion dollars, Gunasekera said.

“These have caused inflation in the United States too. We are also facing inflation because we too have taken similar steps,” he said.

China is the biggest lender to the United States and despite the ‘cold war’ between the two nations Chinese are still buying most of the US bonds, the veteran Marxist said.

“China has the biggest dollar reserves in the world. They have over 4.5 trillion in dollar reserves. The reserves of the US is only the fifth in the world. China has more US dollars than the US. Most people are blind to this fact; politicians have no clue and economists who know this don’t reveal it. So, we are doing the same things over and over again,” he said.

The crisis in Sri Lanka was exacerbated by the fact that the country was ruled by the worst Cabinet in the parliamentary history of the country, Gunasekera said. The government did not know how to deal with the economic crisis, he added.

Gunasekera said the government provided tax concessions to businessmen 14 times so far, aggravating the economic crisis.