Opinion
Hiring foreign experts for IMF negotiations
Your headline article of March 23, titled, ‘Lanka to obtain services of international law firm to handle dealings with IMF’, made me wonder whether this country was so bankrupt that it could not use its own resources like the officials of the Attorney General’s Department, who have been placed at a highest level of emoluments than other Public Servants in Sri Lanka, financial and economists’ for negotiations with the IMF?
We are aware that this is the 17th time Sri Lanka is negotiating a global financial package from the IMF. There have been innumerable IMF training and technical assistance for economic capacity building for strengthening institutional and human capacity to design and implement macro-economic and financial policies that have been enjoyed by the Mandarins of the Ministry of Finance in Sri Lanka. Therefore, the in-house institutional capacity on the part of technocrats in the Finance, Research and Academia and the legal expertise of Sri Lanka should no doubt suffice to convince the IMF of the country’s business plan and debt restructuring policy in return for the proposed IMF assistance.
Besides, if, as the Cabinet Spokesman Minister Pathirane says, such Legal Expertise from a Foreign Company is sought for debt re-structuring, then where in the world was such expertise at the all-important crucial point when the foreign debt was entered into? Surely, Sri Lanka’s external debt which is at the root of the current economic crisis, the recent currency swaps, sovereign bonds, borrowing in the capital markets, the conditionality of such agreements should have engendered a greater degree of transparency, communication to the public, and open policy discussion than been conducted under wraps by a small coterie of politicians and their minions?
What makes it all the more absurd is that such recommendation for hiring an International law firm has been made by the two local committees which the government had appointed to assist in dealing with the IMF! Are we to understand that these two committees appointed to deal with matters relating to IMF have found it both convenient to pass the buck due to their inability to do the job entrusted to them or is it that they are obedient servants ready to obey any political dispensation that keeps them in full feather! If the latter is the case, then there must be some cogent reason for the Government to decide to spare the much scarce foreign exchange for payment to foreign consultancy. It is a fact that the lack of dollars and foreign exchange crisis has already reduced the majority of our people to near penury, scavenging for food and basic amenities in mile long queues, island wide electricity blackouts, etc.
The decision to get international legal companies involved in negotiations with external entities with the tax payer’s money, has some uncomfortable parallels with dubious Consultancies and persons contracted in the past. Imad Zubari, Ex-CIA Agent and his Company commissioned by the Central Bank in 2014, was paid approx. US$ 6.5 Mn for consultancy, was subsequently sentenced to 12 years imprisonment after pleading guilty to a host of offenses, under US law, including financial violations, foreign influence peddling. Then there was also the notorious transaction of US$ 4.7 Mn per year for UK Consultancy M/s. Bell Pottinger to raise Sri Lanka’s image abroad. The task of raising the country’s image should be left to the Sri Lanka High Commission, London. Therefore, why and how M/s. Bell Pottinger was chosen, whether there was in fact a tender procedure, whether due process, was followed still remain quite implicit conclusions!
The technical skill that is apparently lacking for IMF matters and requires to be outsourced may logically be as a result of the woeful inadequacy of the Minister of Finance and his faithful, the Secretary to the Treasury, in IMF and other matters. In which case, consider the calibre of some of previous Ministers of Finance that Sri Lanka has had, such as Sir Oliver Goonethileke, J. R. Jayewardene, Dr N. M. Perera, Felix Dias Bandaranaike, Ronnie de Mel, K .N. Choksy, even the humble and relatively honest Dingiri Banda Wijetunga and compare them with the present Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa!
Further, looking at the aspect of professional integrity vis-à-vis servile political sycophancy and canine loyalty, we see in politically appointed Secretaries of Ministries, today, let us remember that outstanding previous Secretaries to the Treasury as Dr. W. M. Thilakaratne, Dr. A. S. Jayawardene, served the Nation with honesty, objectivity and technical skill. And it is indeed high time that the Government of the Rajapaksas eschewed their criteria for selection to high office as being Raja Paksha or faithful to the Raja and enlisted those able young technocrats and economists, legal eagles, and Research Organisations who abound in this country without wasting scarce foreign exchange on outsourcing tasks that can be very well performed by Sri Lanka’s own officials and technocrats.
Sonali Wijeratne
Kotte.