Professor Wasantha Athukorala of Peradeniya University’s Department of Economics has pointed out in a short Facebook post about the danger of the economic reforms being carried out by the tripartite alliance of Ranil Wickramasinghe and Nandalal Weerasinghe as well as the International Monetary Fund, which fulfils the basic needs of the middle class in the country.
Its excerpts are published below….
“Neo-potential economic killers and Sri Lanka’s petty bourgeoisie….
When we look at the schools of economics, we find different philosophical ideas like classical, Neoclassical, New classical, Keynesians, Neo Keynesians, New Keynesians etc. Nevertheless, none of this is relevant to Sri Lanka. When studying the economic history of Sri Lanka, I understand only two schools of thought. They are the school of classic economic killing and the new school of potential economic killing. Accordingly, there is a school of neo-classical economic killings at present. Before this, there was the potential school of economic killing.
Now let us see the difference between these two. I am not going to talk about the theory. Also, I am not going to tell many practical things here. I will tell you how the new potential economic killers are deceiving the petty bourgeoisie of this country.
Many people think the country has changed in the right direction. Why do they think so?
Rupee is strengthening; inflation is low. Fuel, gas, electricity and milk powder are available. It does not matter if the prices have increased, we can get them. The government is trying to give concessions to 2.5 million. It is the current government that has worked very hard to steer this country in the right direction. Now this government has acted to solve many problems of the petty bourgeoisie in this country, right? How did they do this miracle?
From April 2022 to April 2023, the value of government defaulted loans is USD 4.482 billion. The cost of importing fuel, gas, coal and milk powder during that time was USD 4.205 billion. What does it mean? We were able to import those items due to the default of the loan. By doing that, we are now showing that we are leading the country’s economy well, don’t we?
The truth is different from that. Due to the default of this loan, the amount of money flowing to foreign countries decreased. That is why the economy was stabilized like this. What other methods have been used to deceive the petty bourgeoisie? Listen to my story on YouTube. Alternatively, read Milton Friedman’s book Capitalism and Freedom. Can’t write much. So I will stop.”
