Sri Lanka It's Happening

June 21, 2004

A senior governement minister appeared on television to state that the price of petrol and diesel will not be increased any time soon. Since the UPFA usually does the opposite of what they say you can rest assured that the price of petrol is on the way up.

Could they have been telling the truth for a change? unlikely if you look at their recent track record. Besides, the price of crude oil has gone up and the government has been absorbing a huge losses over the past couple of months. Why? there is going to be a provincial council election on the 10th of july (another collosal waste of money) and to increase the price of oil now could be to loose a few votes.

If the rise in world oil prices isn't bad enoug, the policies (or rather the lack of policies) have resulted in the rupee slumping to an all time low, that means even if we had lower oil prices we the goverment would be paying a higher price in terms of rupee.

It might be possible for the government to absorb such a loss if it didn't have to spend hundreds of millions of the upkeep of 225 parliamentarians and thousands of provincial councillors and members of local governments. On top of that the treasury had to foot the bill for an unwanted election.

All that is just a drop in the bucket when you consider that Sri Lanka might end up not getting the $4.5 Billion that the donors have promised.

Posted by raditha at June 21, 2004 2:14 PM