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Event Report

This event was held on May 16, 2022, by Nepal Institution for International Cooperation and Engagement as another chapter for their economist lecture series. The discussion was about the economic condition of Sri Lanka titled “Decoding Current Sri Lanka Economic Crisis” hosted by Dr. Pramod Jaiswal and orated by an economist and politician in Sri Lanka, who is also a member of Parliament for the Colombo District, Dr. Harsha de Silva. At the beginning of the event, Dr. de Silva stated that he will not be discussing the situation in an academic method but rather in a frank narrative of the current circumstances in Sri Lanka.

Dr. Harsha de Silva was very concise in his speech. He started by stating that the people in Sri Lanka have not experienced this kind of economic crisis in over 70 years and that Sri Lanka is now facing the most difficult times. He first gave a specific situation where their source of fuel was stuck at the dock which made it hard for the people to pay for fuel, different struggles with other essentials like cooking gas where people have to wait in the long queue to be capable of acquiring the said essential not guaranteeing everyone will be accommodated. With disfiguring inflammation, the cost of necessities increased by more than 100 percent, which heightened the struggles of the people not to mention the dropping value of rupees in Sri Lanka from 182 rupees in 2019 to 370 estimated rupees in 2022 per USD.

The crisis in Sri Lanka did not happen overnight, it was like a bomb waiting to explode as a result of multiple immense debts to continuously reform the country. Dr. de Silva stated that all those reforms were not relevant and had put millions of dollars to waste. The citizens of Sri Lanka were driven to protest due to discontentment with their current incompetent and crippled government. As a consequence, leading the people to protest against their government and wish for their current president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to step down. The approach of the political establishment was to use heavy arms which lead to violence, death, and turning houses into ashes.

He mentioned in the event what other countries could learn from Sri Lanka that is what to not do in your country which is to never let incompetent politicians sit in office and to not leave the economic decision-making to uneducated politicians. He then added what could be done to save Sri Lanka which was to reach out to its neighboring countries such as India and financial support from the IMF. After the speech of Dr de Silva, he answered multiple questions asked by the audience. While answering questions the speaker then emphasized that the situation in Sri Lanka will get worse before it gets better because as of right now, they are at rock bottom.

Prepared by Kristine Del Mundo, Research Intern at NIICE