Money printing would put the country in a paradoxical situation: President

If we print more money, it will further increase inflation, and when we don’t print money and work with available funds, it will have our work cut out for us, President Ranil Wickremesinghe said in Ampara on Saturday.The President made this remark addressing the public officers at an awareness programme on the multi-sector mechanism to empower rural economic revitalization centres to ensure food security and nutrition, at Hardy Advanced Technological Auditorium in Ampara.

“Our problem with regard to fertilizer is that there are bills of Rs. 8 billion from last year payable to companies and we have started settling them. We have paid about Rs. 4 billion out of it,” he said.

He also said that the agriculture modernization programme would be implemented from next year concurrent to the food security programme.The Ampara district contributes 22% of the national paddy harvest and discussions were mainly focused on making paddy cultivation in the Yala and Maha season a success.

“We are experiencing a difficult period and we must not allow anyone to starve for lack of food. When the next harvesting season is successful, we can move forward and we will have to continue this programme until end of 2023. Even if our domestic food problem is tackled, a global food crisis may arise. That’s why it is important to implement the agricultural modernisation programme from next year. This means, we have undertaken new tasks in the agriculture sector and we all have to work together to achieve the objectives. Traditional politics is useless in this context. We need the kind of politics that will help solve a looming food crisis,” the President noted. -SN