Rajapaksa Sentenced Sri Lanka Into A 10 Trillion Debt Trap: PM Wickremesinghe
March 9, 2016
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has charged that the Mahinda Rajapaksa led administration has sentenced the country into a debt trap of almost Rs. 10 trillion.
Speaking in Parliament on Tuesday, Wickremesinghe alleged that due to the arbitrary procedures adopted by the previous government, the country is today submerged in a debt of Rs. 9.5 trillion. “This could even be Rs. 10 trillion,” Wickremesinghe said.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe
But according to the Premier, instead of taking loans like previous governments and trying to get out of this crisis, his government was looking at increasing the income from within the country. “This is what we are trying to do,” he said, soon after proposing several tax amendments.
To get out of the current dept trap; Wickremesinghe said that his government was specifically focusing on bringing in new investments to the country, increasing job opportunities and exports, and implement an effective and proactive income tax process.
“Even when we were drafting the national budget for 2016, we still did not have the exact information about the debt situation the country was in. The previous government had hid all these information. It was a typical situation where the skeletons were hidden in the cupboard,” Wickremesinghe charged.
