Sri Lanka may face the same fate as Myanmar

Islamabad: There had been early warnings of an unprecedented economic crisis that Colombo could face though the Rajapaksa regime was reluctant to go for fiscal reforms or seek help from external sources like the IMF.

These were the views expressed by Asanga Abeyagoonsekera, a geopolitical analyst from Sri Lanka, in a webinar organised here by the Institute of Regional Studies. Asanga said that increasing militarisation in Sri Lanka and its influence on the judiciary and the gross ignorance of human rights violations not only downgraded the island’s democratic stature at the international level but also negatively impacted on country’s economic progress. The people of Sri Lanka were adamant about getting rid of Rajapaksa and its family from the politics. They have vehemently rejected every proposal that Rajapaksa had offered to appease them.

Huge borrowings from China, the extremely low turnout of the tourism industry due to Covid-19, and the regime’s reluctance to do fiscal adjustments have caused the economic crisis to linger on, said Asanga adding that the ultra-nationalist policies of the Rajapaksa regime led to the debt to GDP ratio to 104 percent in 2021 from 42 percent in 2019, and the gap continues to swell.