Sri Lanka’s economic policy reforms to push country up in the WB’s Ease of Doing Business global rankings
Former Indian Finance Secretary, Dr. Narayan has reportedly said that Sri Lanka is poised to witness a major leap in the World Bank’s (WB) Ease of Doing Business global rankings following the many economic policy reforms envisaged by the government similar to that of India’s efforts.
Dr. Narayan has made this observation speaking on the sidelines of a discussion last week.
He has reportedly said that the sustained reforms in India, which took about three years to bear fruit, resulted in India moving 30 notches up into the top 100 in the 2018 rankings.
According to the World Bank’s ‘distance to frontier metric’, one of the key indicators in the Doing Business 2018 rankings, India’s score jumped 4.76 which meant that India improved its business regulations in absolute terms towards best practices in business regulation.
Reports state that Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka Dr. P. Nandalal Weerasinghe has expressed a similar sentiment saying that Sri Lanka has successfully implemented three key structural reforms, the Value Added Tax (VAT) reforms, the Inland Revenue Act and the Foreign Exchange Management Act which will replace the Exchange Control Act.
He has pointed out that this will not only help Sri Lanka take a jump in rankings per se but improve the overall environment to do business.
“In the last couple of years, there has been a track record of implementing economic reforms. Going forward, the other key legislative reforms will also come in place making it easier to do business and easier for both exports and FDIs to perform better,” the Deputy Governor has said addressing a post Budget seminar organized by KPMG Sri Lanka recently.
Dr. Weerasinghe has said that on the VAT reforms, the government is already seeing results in terms of improvement in revenue collection while the full impact of the recently enacted Inland Revenue Act will be known from next year.
“The stability seen in exchange rates and the interest rates in recent times were due to the good performance of the government in terms of fiscal discipline. From the Central Bank’s point of view, this helped us to a great extent to manage the two rates,” the Deputy Governor has said.
Meanwhile, Chairman of the Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, Prof. Razeen Sally has reportedly commended the many ‘pro-reform’ and liberalization policy measures announced in the Budget 2018.
“The removal of almost 1,200 para tariffs in the Budget and the government’s plans to abolish all the existing para-tariffs in three years, are definitely steps in the right direction. These measures will help improve Sri Lanka’s trade competitiveness,” Dr. Sally, an Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore has said.
OSL take:
The confidence expressed by economic experts in the economic reforms proposed by the government of Sri Lanka indicates that the country’s economy is poised to see a buoyant growth creating many investment opportunities. The new reforms will make it easier to do business and easier for both exports and FDIs to perform better.
| Article Code : | VBS/AT/05122017/Z_4 |