City Life
City Life
21 July 2007
Peace would be a better business planfor the island of a hundred ministers
‘Generous Fiscal Incentives’ seems an apt advertisement for public service here, for Sri Lankans bewail that their government is for sale. Police posts along Colombo’s locked-down corniche are sponsored by a leasing company. A steelmaker advertises on the checkpoint to the besieged military HQ, occasionally infiltrated by Tamil Tiger separatists intent on suicide-bombing. And President Mahinda Rajapakse’s cult of personality is plastered over state-owned banks, though the central bank governor insists he is independent. The statistics tell their own story: interest rates over 18 per cent, inflation at 16 per cent and a money supply that grew by 17 per cent in April to finance an unwinnable war. Sri Lanka has an infrastructure Attlee’s colonial office would recognise, its inefficiencies costing business plenty. A corporate leader laments: ‘It seems that each motley crew that come into government want to keep the conflict going for just a little while longer so that they and the next five generations of their offspring can make enough to secure their comfort.’
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