President favours privatisation of all public enterprises excluding state banks

By Sanath Nanayakkare

President Ranil Wickremesinghe delivering the Lalith Athulathmudali Commemorative Oration last week said that the government should not be running businesses, but should hold onto its role in the banking sector.

“The government should stop doing business completely. But there needs to be one exception here. The government should stay in the financial sector. The government will have to build the banks it owns and make them stronger. However, they should be run like any good commercial bank. And we don’t mind giving depositors and other stakeholders an opportunity to own the minority shares of state banks. That will ensure fairness and operational discipline. Thus the government will continue to have its control in the economy by playing an efficient role in the financial sector. We shouldn’t try to do so by continuing to have control in entities such as the Water’s Edge or the Hilton Hotel. Those are secondary. While the government remains strong in the financial sector, it will have to help the technology sector because the envisaged digital economy will require funding,” the President said.

“We tried state ownership. We tried corporations and other models; due to which trillion of rupees were lost, making us poorer. So, we should put the running of businesses in the hands of the private sector except for banking business,” he said.