Killing Two Birds With One Sri Lankan Styled “Oscar”
By W.A. Wijewardena -March 5, 2013
Dr W.A. Wijewardena
Handagama Style: Kill two birds with one stone
Asoka Handagama, mathematician turned central banker turned quantitative economist turned rural developer turned artiste of numerous genre, has sought to kill two birds with one stone, a stone in the style of a Sri Lankan “Oscar” this time. His first bird is to support the ailing external sector of the country. His second bird is to give a “rebirth” to the already dead, according to Handagama, Sri Lankan cinema industry. He did so in a public lecture he delivered to a packed audience at the Central Bank’s Centre for Banking Studies last week on the very long theme “ Sri Lankan Cinema: More than a Dream; A Strategic Idea to Develop Cinema Industry as a Part of Overall Development Plan”. Handagama who is famous for creating ‘adults only’ artistic work sent his audience to laughter in an ironic twist of humour at the beginning that his lecture will also be for adults only, meaning that it is for serious consideration.
Sri Lanka’s external sector gone sour
Now to the nature of the first bird he sought to kill, namely, Sri Lanka’s ailing external sector.
Sri Lanka’s external sector involving all economic transactions with other nations and vice versa has been fragile and sour. Its trade account is replete with a wide gap that refuses to give up or narrow despite the measures to promote exports and economise on imports. For instance in 2012, the trade gap amounting to $ 9.3 billion was only marginally less than the earnings from exports of $ 9.7 billion, where exports had recorded a decline of 7 per cent in that year compared with the previous year. Though the authorities have been jubilant about the narrowing of the trade deficit marginally in 2012-again from $ 9.7 billion in 2011 to $ 9.3. billion-this trade deficit is still whopping 14 per cent of the estimated GDP of the country for that year. The money needed to pay for the higher import bill than export earnings has to be earned by selling more services, receiving more incomes from foreigners and having more remittances from Sri Lankans working abroad. But the gap in the trade account is so high that these sources have not been able to provide adequate funds to fill it. For instance, the country makes a comfortable earning by selling services to foreigners. But the payment of interest on foreign loans and dividends on foreign investments has reduced that earning’s power to alleviate the harmful effects of the high trade gap. Hence, it is left to Sri Lankans working abroad to send remittances abundantly to finance a good part of the trade deficit. The unfinanced gap still gaping at the country after all these transactions have been recorded, known as current account deficit, has to be financed by borrowing money from abroad and getting foreigners to invest in the country’s share market and businesses. But that makes the country pay more interest payments and bigger dividends in subsequent years making the current transactions still more fragile and sour.
Divi Neguma Yannen Adahas Way
Charitha Ratwatte
Are rural agriculture and fishery communities excluded?
The Divi Neguma Act which was certified into law on 11 January 2013 and published in the Gazette of the same day is designed to promote a development intervention based on the community. The Act creates two basic institutions at the community level (see Organigram of Divi Neguma). In Part II of the Act sections 9 to 14, it creates the Divi Neguma Community Based Organisation. By Part VI, sections 25 to 28 the Divi Neguma Community Based Banks are created.
Community is defined by the Interpretation Section of the Act, Section 45, as follows: ‘community’ means plantation, urban or industrial sectors of the public. It is an accepted general principle in the law relating to the Interpretation of Statutes that when the word ‘means’ is used in describing what an entity is, it limits the application of the meaning to the exact same words that follow. In other words the use of the ‘means’ is a limitation of a definition. It excludes the inclusion of any other entity into the category. On the contrary, when the word ‘includes’ is used, it is taken to mean that nothing is excluded, the entities that follow the word ‘includes’ and as well as other entities of the same or generic type can be included.
The word ‘means’ limits the class of entities in the category while the word ‘includes’ expands the class. The dictionary meaning of ‘mean’ is ‘to have such a meaning’. This is consistent with the interpretation that no other thing can be within that meaning, other than what is expressly provided for. ‘Include,’ according to the dictionary, is the opposite of ‘exclude’. Exclude in the dictionary is given to mean ‘to deliberately not include’.
Stroud’s Legal Dictionary is even more definite: ‘the use of the word “means” is a hard and fast definition and no other meaning can be assigned to the expression than what is put down in the definition,’ quoting Master of the Rolls, Lord Esher in Gough v. Gough (1891 2 QB 85). On use of the word ‘include,’ Stroud quotes a judgment in R. v. Kershaw (26LJMC) 19 – “‘include’ is a phase of extension and not of a restrictive definition”. Advocate E.B. Wickramanayake, in his ‘Legal Dictionary for Ceylon’ (1948) quotes a 4 N.L.R. 12, case which held that the words ‘shall include’ in a definition clause mean ‘shall have the following meanings in addition to its proper meanings’. Osborn’s Concise Law Dictionary (1947) quotes a Latin maxim – ‘Inclusio unius est exclusio alterius’: ‘the inclusion of one is the exclusion of another’.
Effect of defining community Read More
