Features
The Sick Man of Europe
By Michael Patrick O’Leary
According to The Economist, “Britain has endured a grim decade during which perhaps a quarter of a million people died younger than expected.”
Declining Life Expectancy
Between 1980 and 2011 life expectancy in the UK rose at a steady pace of nearly three months every year. After 2011, the rise slowed. If Britain’s life-expectancy gains continued as the long-term trend, then life expectancy in 2022 would have been 2.2 years longer than it actually was. Those 26 months represent around 700,000 additional people that have died sooner than might have been expected in the early 2010s.
Academics from the University of Oxford and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine examined global life expectancy ratings between 1952 and 2021. In a league table of life expectancy, 70 years ago, the UK ranked seventh in the world, following closely behind Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Now, the UK performs worse than all G7 countries except the US.
The UK dropped from seventh place to 29th in global life-expectancy rankings. Life expectancy for males in the UK between 2018 and 2020 was 79, for females 82.9. Norway’s life expectancy is 80.9 years for men and 84.4 years for women. The number in Sweden was 83.18 years, marking a 0.18 per cent increase from 2021. Seventy years ago, Britons had longer life expectancy than anywhere in the G7. Now people in France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan live longer than Britons. Ireland also has higher life expectancy than the UK. Japan has the highest life expectancy at birth – 85 years. (Although , Monaco is at the top of the UN’s league table with 87 median).
The Economist
says, “something has gone badly wrong in the past decade, and large numbers of Britons have lived shorter lives as a result. That raises two big questions. How much of this is specific to Britain? And why?” This is not just because places such as South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau have got richer. The pandemic cannot be blamed for a quarter of a million early deaths since 2011. Britain had already slipped in the ranking before Covid-19 hit and has since returned to its pre-pandemic trajectory. More middle-aged and younger people are dying than otherwise would have. Girls born in 2020 are now expected to die 4.8 years earlier than was expected in 2012, and boys, 4.5 years earlier.
Variations
Analysis by the Health Foundation shows that, compared to life expectancy overall in OECD countries in 2018, only Mexico is lower than the UK. Women in the poorest 10% of areas in England can expect to live on average 78.7 years – significantly below the average of 83.2 years for the whole of England and less than the overall life expectancy for women in countries including Colombia (79.8 years), Latvia (79.7 years) and Hungary (79.6 years).
The shocking thing is that the decline in life expectancy is not evenly spread over the UK. As The Economist put it: “the uncomfortable truth is that the 250,000 do not die in places like the London borough of Westminster (where life expectancy surpasses that in the Swiss canton of Geneva). They die in poorer towns and cities.” Glasgow has the lowest life expectancy in the UK. According to the National Records of Scotland, life expectancy in Glasgow was 78.3 years for females and 73.1 years for males. At the national level, Scotland’s life expectancy was the lowest among UK countries at 76.8 years for males and 81.0 for females.
Life expectancy is 18 years higher for men in the richest part of Kensington (92) than it is in New Cross Gate (74), a poor part of London only six miles to the east. Even within the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea itself there are wide variations in socio-economic circumstances. An area best known for royal and Russian oligarch and Saudi residents (or non-resident owners ) also has pockets, particularly in the north end of the borough, of severe deprivation. The lowest life expectancy in Greater London for both men (77.0 years) and women (81.7 years) is found in Barking and Dagenham.
Healthy life expectancy means the average number of years that a person can expect to live in “full health” by taking into account years lived in less than full health due to disease and/or injury. The Healthy Life Years indicator, also known as disability-free life expectancy or Sullivan’s Index, is a European structural indicator computed by Eurostat. Healthy life expectancy for men in Tower Hamlets is 65.3 years whereas for women it is only 57.8 years.
Poverty
Severe socio-economic deprivation tends to lead to poor health. Poverty is damaging to health in many ways — through mental illness, a lack of education about nutrition and healthy ways of living and inadequate housing. Awaab Ishak was a two-year-old who died because of the fungal mould in the flat in which his family lived.
I spent a year in the UK, after becoming an exile 25 years ago. One can see every day on the streets how unhealthy so many people are. So many people look shabby, downtrodden and depressed. The most striking thing is how many grossly obese people are walking (with difficulty) the streets. Some of them are in wheelchairs. One sees a lot of wheelchairs. Obesity is one league table on which Britain ranks highly, beating all other Europeans except the Maltesers. Obesity used to be a sign of affluence, now it is a disease of poverty. Around one in every four adults and around one in every five children aged 10 in the UK are overweight. The prevalence of reception-aged children living with obesity in 2021-22 was highest in the North East (11.4%) and the West Midlands (11.3%). It was lowest in the South East (8.7%), South West (8.9%) and East of England (9.2%).
Politics of Poor Health
From the 1940s to 2010 the state pension age was 60 for women and 65 for men. Since then, the pension age for women has been equalized with men’s, and both raised to 66. Two further increases are due to follow: to 67 by 2027, and to 68 in 2046. The government was hoping it could bring that second date forward in order to improve its fiscal position. Raising the pension
age has caused riots on the streets of France. Tory MPs have urged a delay, arguing that ordinary voters would resent having to work longer at a time when the government has just relaxed tax rules on pensions for the wealthy.
One senior Tory MP warned of the “critical juxtaposition” of scrapping the £1mn lifetime allowance for pension savings while asking ordinary voters to work until 68 for a not very generous state pension. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has released his tax returns. They show that he has made large sums outside politics and only paid tax at a rate of 22%.
Many people, including myself, have written about the downsides of economic growth. Whatever about all that, those who are supposed to be running the UK are pinning all their hopes on economic growth without having any clear plan about how to achieve it. Liz Truss was toppled by her madcap schemes to boost growth. All she did was give more money to the already rich. Hunt and Sunak seem more sensible but in reality are just mouthing optimistic platitudes.
The British malaise goes back a long way and Johnson, Truss, Kwarteng, Sunak and Hunt have done nothing but kick problems into the long grass hoping that they will solve themselves. In The Atlantic, Derek Thompson pithily summarizes the UK today: “Britain is pretty poor for a rich place. UK living standards and wages have fallen significantly behind those of Western Europe. By some measures, in fact, real wages in the UK are lower than they were 15 years ago and will likely be even lower next year.”
Thompson continues: “In the past 30 years, the British economy chose finance over industry, Britain’s government chose austerity over investment, and British voters chose a closed and poorer economy over an open and richer one. The predictable results are falling wages and stunningly low productivity growth.” Another pithy summary from Thompson: “The UK is now an object lesson for other countries dealing with a dark triad of de-industrialization, de-growth, and denigration of foreigners.”
Austerity was the Cameron (remember him coming to Sri Lanka telling us how to run our country?) government’s response to the 2008 global financial crisis. That meant cutting public services even further which means there is less support for poor people to care for elderly and sick people. Brexit was supposed to bring an extra £350 million to the NHS every week. That was a lie. Brexit brought staff shortages to the NHS as foreign workers were made unwelcome. There are food shortages today because there are no foreign seasonal workers to pick the crops and no foreign HGV drivers to deliver to the supermarkets. Imports and exports of food are stymied by hellish bureaucracy.
NHS
The days have probably gone when the NHS was revered. A study of 37.5 million patients in 2018 suffering four different sorts of cancer showed that British cancer survival rates were worse, not just than EU neighbours, but worse even than China’s. China’s breast cancer survival rate is about the same as Britain’s, its prostate cancer survival rate is worse and its lung and stomach cancer survival rates are better. China is a country in which only half of doctors have university degrees.
Municipal Heroes
Most improvements in infant mortality and life expectancy in Britain came not as a result of experiments on animals or investment by drug companies but because of public health measures implemented by local government. Successive Conservative governments have cut public spending, starving local authorities of funds to give social support to local communities. Improvements in nutrition, hygiene, housing, sanitation, control of infectious diseases and other public health measures historically reduced mortality rates. Very old people were rare 100 years ago. Less than one in 150 people was aged 80 and over in the 1920s. By 1920, life expectancy was 56 years for males and 59 years for females. Males born in 1841 could expect to live to only 40.2 years and females to 42.3 years, mainly because of high mortality rates in infancy and childhood.
The Great Stink of London
by Stephen Halliday is a fascinating read. It recounts how civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette built London’s first sewer network (still in use today), which helped to wipe out cholera in the capital. The summer of 1858 was particularly hot and humid. For centuries, the Thames had been the city’s main thoroughfare as well as a dumping ground for human, animal and industrial waste. London’s population more than doubled between 1800 and 1850, making it by far the largest in the world. By 1858, the stench overwhelmed Parliament and the politicians decided to do something about it. Bazalgette produced a network of 82 miles of new sewers, great subterranean boulevards that in places were larger than the underground train tunnels then under construction.
In 2023, Britain’s rivers are again full of shit plus a lot of chemicals and microplastics that were unknown in Bazalgette’s time. Untreated sewage released by privatized water companies is responsible for 35% of the pollution of British rivers. Pollution by water companies is particularly high in the south and southwest of England. Excessive use of fertilizer and pesticides in agriculture is responsible for 40% of river pollution. Run-off from roads and towns which contains pollutants such as oil is responsible for 18%.
Professor Steve Ormerod, an ecologist at Cardiff University, warns of other threats. He says: “We need to understand the risks which come with emerging pollutants – pharmaceuticals, microplastics. We don’t know, at this stage how big a problem they’re going to be.” The Environment Agency says, “people in deprived and heavily populated urban areas were more likely to live within 600m of a river with poor chemical or biological quality”.
The Environmental Audit Committee’s inquiry uncovered “multiple failures in the monitoring, governance and enforcement on water quality,” carried out by England’s Environment Agency. Since 1993, the number of water quality samples taken annually by the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales has dropped by 57%, which the committee says is a result of budget cuts.
On Wednesday March 17, 2023, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, presented his budget to the House of Commons, a budget that needed to restore economic health to the UK after the disastrous budget of his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng. Economic health is an important factor in the physical health of the people of Britain. The physical health of the population in turn affects the health of the economy. Disturbing statistics are emerging which indicate that the health of people living in the UK is declining. A relative worsening of population health has historically been an early sign of severe political and economic problems. The crisis is here for the UK, the sick man of Europe.
by Dr Gotabhya Ranasinghe
Senior Consultant Cardiologist
National Hospital Sri Lanka
When we sought a meeting with Hon Dr. Ramesh Pathirana, Minister of Health, he graciously cleared his busy schedule to accommodate us. Renowned for his attentive listening and deep understanding, Minister Pathirana is dedicated to advancing the health sector. His openness and transparency exemplify the qualities of an exemplary politician and minister.
Dr. Palitha Mahipala, the current Health Secretary, demonstrates both commendable enthusiasm and unwavering support. This combination of attributes makes him a highly compatible colleague for the esteemed Minister of Health.
Our discussion centered on a project that has been in the works for the past 30 years, one that no other minister had managed to advance.
Minister Pathirana, however, recognized the project’s significance and its potential to revolutionize care for heart patients.
The project involves the construction of a state-of-the-art facility at the premises of the National Hospital Colombo. The project’s location within the premises of the National Hospital underscores its importance and relevance to the healthcare infrastructure of the nation.
This facility will include a cardiology building and a tertiary care center, equipped with the latest technology to handle and treat all types of heart-related conditions and surgeries.
Securing funding was a major milestone for this initiative. Minister Pathirana successfully obtained approval for a $40 billion loan from the Asian Development Bank. With the funding in place, the foundation stone is scheduled to be laid in September this year, and construction will begin in January 2025.
This project guarantees a consistent and uninterrupted supply of stents and related medications for heart patients. As a result, patients will have timely access to essential medical supplies during their treatment and recovery. By securing these critical resources, the project aims to enhance patient outcomes, minimize treatment delays, and maintain the highest standards of cardiac care.
Upon its fruition, this monumental building will serve as a beacon of hope and healing, symbolizing the unwavering dedication to improving patient outcomes and fostering a healthier society.We anticipate a future marked by significant progress and positive outcomes in Sri Lanka’s cardiovascular treatment landscape within the foreseeable timeframe.
by Fr. Emmanuel Fernando, OMI
Jesuit Fr. Aloysius Pieris (affectionately called Fr. Aloy) celebrated his 90th birthday on April 9, 2024 and I, as the editor of our Oblate Journal, THE MISSIONARY OBLATE had gone to press by that time. Immediately I decided to publish an article, appreciating the untiring selfless services he continues to offer for inter-Faith dialogue, the renewal of the Catholic Church, his concern for the poor and the suffering Sri Lankan masses and to me, the present writer.
It was in 1988, when I was appointed Director of the Oblate Scholastics at Ampitiya by the then Oblate Provincial Fr. Anselm Silva, that I came to know Fr. Aloy more closely. Knowing well his expertise in matters spiritual, theological, Indological and pastoral, and with the collaborative spirit of my companion-formators, our Oblate Scholastics were sent to Tulana, the Research and Encounter Centre, Kelaniya, of which he is the Founder-Director, for ‘exposure-programmes’ on matters spiritual, biblical, theological and pastoral. Some of these dimensions according to my view and that of my companion-formators, were not available at the National Seminary, Ampitiya.
Ever since that time, our Oblate formators/ accompaniers at the Oblate Scholasticate, Ampitiya , have continued to send our Oblate Scholastics to Tulana Centre for deepening their insights and convictions regarding matters needed to serve the people in today’s context. Fr. Aloy also had tried very enthusiastically with the Oblate team headed by Frs. Oswald Firth and Clement Waidyasekara to begin a Theologate, directed by the Religious Congregations in Sri Lanka, for the contextual formation/ accompaniment of their members. It should very well be a desired goal of the Leaders / Provincials of the Religious Congregations.
Besides being a formator/accompanier at the Oblate Scholasticate, I was entrusted also with the task of editing and publishing our Oblate journal, ‘The Missionary Oblate’. To maintain the quality of the journal I continue to depend on Fr. Aloy for his thought-provoking and stimulating articles on Biblical Spirituality, Biblical Theology and Ecclesiology. I am very grateful to him for his generous assistance. Of late, his writings on renewal of the Church, initiated by Pope St. John XX111 and continued by Pope Francis through the Synodal path, published in our Oblate journal, enable our readers to focus their attention also on the needed renewal in the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka. Fr. Aloy appreciated very much the Synodal path adopted by the Jesuit Pope Francis for the renewal of the Church, rooted very much on prayerful discernment. In my Religious and presbyteral life, Fr.Aloy continues to be my spiritual animator / guide and ongoing formator / acccompanier.
Fr. Aloysius Pieris, BA Hons (Lond), LPh (SHC, India), STL (PFT, Naples), PhD (SLU/VC), ThD (Tilburg), D.Ltt (KU), has been one of the eminent Asian theologians well recognized internationally and one who has lectured and held visiting chairs in many universities both in the West and in the East. Many members of Religious Congregations from Asian countries have benefited from his lectures and guidance in the East Asian Pastoral Institute (EAPI) in Manila, Philippines. He had been a Theologian consulted by the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences for many years. During his professorship at the Gregorian University in Rome, he was called to be a member of a special group of advisers on other religions consulted by Pope Paul VI.
Fr. Aloy is the author of more than 30 books and well over 500 Research Papers. Some of his books and articles have been translated and published in several countries. Among those books, one can find the following: 1) The Genesis of an Asian Theology of Liberation (An Autobiographical Excursus on the Art of Theologising in Asia, 2) An Asian Theology of Liberation, 3) Providential Timeliness of Vatican 11 (a long-overdue halt to a scandalous millennium, 4) Give Vatican 11 a chance, 5) Leadership in the Church, 6) Relishing our faith in working for justice (Themes for study and discussion), 7) A Message meant mainly, not exclusively for Jesuits (Background information necessary for helping Francis renew the Church), 8) Lent in Lanka (Reflections and Resolutions, 9) Love meets wisdom (A Christian Experience of Buddhism, 10) Fire and Water 11) God’s Reign for God’s poor, 12) Our Unhiddden Agenda (How we Jesuits work, pray and form our men). He is also the Editor of two journals, Vagdevi, Journal of Religious Reflection and Dialogue, New Series.
Fr. Aloy has a BA in Pali and Sanskrit from the University of London and a Ph.D in Buddhist Philosophy from the University of Sri Lankan, Vidyodaya Campus. On Nov. 23, 2019, he was awarded the prestigious honorary Doctorate of Literature (D.Litt) by the Chancellor of the University of Kelaniya, the Most Venerable Welamitiyawe Dharmakirthi Sri Kusala Dhamma Thera.
Fr. Aloy continues to be a promoter of Gospel values and virtues. Justice as a constitutive dimension of love and social concern for the downtrodden masses are very much noted in his life and work. He had very much appreciated the commitment of the late Fr. Joseph (Joe) Fernando, the National Director of the Social and Economic Centre (SEDEC) for the poor.
In Sri Lanka, a few religious Congregations – the Good Shepherd Sisters, the Christian Brothers, the Marist Brothers and the Oblates – have invited him to animate their members especially during their Provincial Congresses, Chapters and International Conferences. The mainline Christian Churches also have sought his advice and followed his seminars. I, for one, regret very much, that the Sri Lankan authorities of the Catholic Church –today’s Hierarchy—- have not sought Fr.
Aloy’s expertise for the renewal of the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka and thus have not benefited from the immense store of wisdom and insight that he can offer to our local Church while the Sri Lankan bishops who governed the Catholic church in the immediate aftermath of the Second Vatican Council (Edmund Fernando OMI, Anthony de Saram, Leo Nanayakkara OSB, Frank Marcus Fernando, Paul Perera,) visited him and consulted him on many matters. Among the Tamil Bishops, Bishop Rayappu Joseph was keeping close contact with him and Bishop J. Deogupillai hosted him and his team visiting him after the horrible Black July massacre of Tamils.
Sri Lanka-Singapore Free Trade Agreement
By Gomi Senadhira
senadhiragomi@gmail.com
“You might tell fairy tales, but the progress of a country cannot be achieved through such narratives. A country cannot be developed by making false promises. The country moved backward because of the electoral promises made by political parties throughout time. We have witnessed that the ultimate result of this is the country becoming bankrupt. Unfortunately, many segments of the population have not come to realize this yet.” – President Ranil Wickremesinghe, 2024 Budget speech
Any Sri Lankan would agree with the above words of President Wickremesinghe on the false promises our politicians and officials make and the fairy tales they narrate which bankrupted this country. So, to understand this, let’s look at one such fairy tale with lots of false promises; Ranil Wickremesinghe’s greatest achievement in the area of international trade and investment promotion during the Yahapalana period, Sri Lanka-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (SLSFTA).
It is appropriate and timely to do it now as Finance Minister Wickremesinghe has just presented to parliament a bill on the National Policy on Economic Transformation which includes the establishment of an Office for International Trade and the Sri Lanka Institute of Economics and International Trade.
Was SLSFTA a “Cleverly negotiated Free Trade Agreement” as stated by the (former) Minister of Development Strategies and International Trade Malik Samarawickrama during the Parliamentary Debate on the SLSFTA in July 2018, or a colossal blunder covered up with lies, false promises, and fairy tales? After SLSFTA was signed there were a number of fairy tales published on this agreement by the Ministry of Development Strategies and International, Institute of Policy Studies, and others.
However, for this article, I would like to limit my comments to the speech by Minister Samarawickrama during the Parliamentary Debate, and the two most important areas in the agreement which were covered up with lies, fairy tales, and false promises, namely: revenue loss for Sri Lanka and Investment from Singapore. On the other important area, “Waste products dumping” I do not want to comment here as I have written extensively on the issue.
1. The revenue loss
During the Parliamentary Debate in July 2018, Minister Samarawickrama stated “…. let me reiterate that this FTA with Singapore has been very cleverly negotiated by us…. The liberalisation programme under this FTA has been carefully designed to have the least impact on domestic industry and revenue collection. We have included all revenue sensitive items in the negative list of items which will not be subject to removal of tariff. Therefore, 97.8% revenue from Customs duty is protected. Our tariff liberalisation will take place over a period of 12-15 years! In fact, the revenue earned through tariffs on goods imported from Singapore last year was Rs. 35 billion.
The revenue loss for over the next 15 years due to the FTA is only Rs. 733 million– which when annualised, on average, is just Rs. 51 million. That is just 0.14% per year! So anyone who claims the Singapore FTA causes revenue loss to the Government cannot do basic arithmetic! Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, I call on my fellow members of this House – don’t mislead the public with baseless criticism that is not grounded in facts. Don’t look at petty politics and use these issues for your own political survival.”
I was surprised to read the minister’s speech because an article published in January 2018 in “The Straits Times“, based on information released by the Singaporean Negotiators stated, “…. With the FTA, tariff savings for Singapore exports are estimated to hit $10 million annually“.
As the annual tariff savings (that is the revenue loss for Sri Lanka) calculated by the Singaporean Negotiators, Singaporean $ 10 million (Sri Lankan rupees 1,200 million in 2018) was way above the rupees’ 733 million revenue loss for 15 years estimated by the Sri Lankan negotiators, it was clear to any observer that one of the parties to the agreement had not done the basic arithmetic!
Six years later, according to a report published by “The Morning” newspaper, speaking at the Committee on Public Finance (COPF) on 7th May 2024, Mr Samarawickrama’s chief trade negotiator K.J. Weerasinghehad had admitted “…. that forecasted revenue loss for the Government of Sri Lanka through the Singapore FTA is Rs. 450 million in 2023 and Rs. 1.3 billion in 2024.”
If these numbers are correct, as tariff liberalisation under the SLSFTA has just started, we will pass Rs 2 billion very soon. Then, the question is how Sri Lanka’s trade negotiators made such a colossal blunder. Didn’t they do their basic arithmetic? If they didn’t know how to do basic arithmetic they should have at least done their basic readings. For example, the headline of the article published in The Straits Times in January 2018 was “Singapore, Sri Lanka sign FTA, annual savings of $10m expected”.
Anyway, as Sri Lanka’s chief negotiator reiterated at the COPF meeting that “…. since 99% of the tariffs in Singapore have zero rates of duty, Sri Lanka has agreed on 80% tariff liberalisation over a period of 15 years while expecting Singapore investments to address the imbalance in trade,” let’s turn towards investment.
Investment from Singapore
In July 2018, speaking during the Parliamentary Debate on the FTA this is what Minister Malik Samarawickrama stated on investment from Singapore, “Already, thanks to this FTA, in just the past two-and-a-half months since the agreement came into effect we have received a proposal from Singapore for investment amounting to $ 14.8 billion in an oil refinery for export of petroleum products. In addition, we have proposals for a steel manufacturing plant for exports ($ 1 billion investment), flour milling plant ($ 50 million), sugar refinery ($ 200 million). This adds up to more than $ 16.05 billion in the pipeline on these projects alone.
And all of these projects will create thousands of more jobs for our people. In principle approval has already been granted by the BOI and the investors are awaiting the release of land the environmental approvals to commence the project.
I request the Opposition and those with vested interests to change their narrow-minded thinking and join us to develop our country. We must always look at what is best for the whole community, not just the few who may oppose. We owe it to our people to courageously take decisions that will change their lives for the better.”
According to the media report I quoted earlier, speaking at the Committee on Public Finance (COPF) Chief Negotiator Weerasinghe has admitted that Sri Lanka was not happy with overall Singapore investments that have come in the past few years in return for the trade liberalisation under the Singapore-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement. He has added that between 2021 and 2023 the total investment from Singapore had been around $162 million!
What happened to those projects worth $16 billion negotiated, thanks to the SLSFTA, in just the two-and-a-half months after the agreement came into effect and approved by the BOI? I do not know about the steel manufacturing plant for exports ($ 1 billion investment), flour milling plant ($ 50 million) and sugar refinery ($ 200 million).
However, story of the multibillion-dollar investment in the Petroleum Refinery unfolded in a manner that would qualify it as the best fairy tale with false promises presented by our politicians and the officials, prior to 2019 elections.
Though many Sri Lankans got to know, through the media which repeatedly highlighted a plethora of issues surrounding the project and the questionable credentials of the Singaporean investor, the construction work on the Mirrijiwela Oil Refinery along with the cement factory began on the24th of March 2019 with a bang and Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and his ministers along with the foreign and local dignitaries laid the foundation stones.
That was few months before the 2019 Presidential elections. Inaugurating the construction work Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the projects will create thousands of job opportunities in the area and surrounding districts.
The oil refinery, which was to be built over 200 acres of land, with the capacity to refine 200,000 barrels of crude oil per day, was to generate US$7 billion of exports and create 1,500 direct and 3,000 indirect jobs. The construction of the refinery was to be completed in 44 months. Four years later, in August 2023 the Cabinet of Ministers approved the proposal presented by President Ranil Wickremesinghe to cancel the agreement with the investors of the refinery as the project has not been implemented! Can they explain to the country how much money was wasted to produce that fairy tale?
It is obvious that the President, ministers, and officials had made huge blunders and had deliberately misled the public and the parliament on the revenue loss and potential investment from SLSFTA with fairy tales and false promises.
As the president himself said, a country cannot be developed by making false promises or with fairy tales and these false promises and fairy tales had bankrupted the country. “Unfortunately, many segments of the population have not come to realize this yet”.
(The writer, a specialist and an activist on trade and development issues . )
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