By Garvin Karunaratne
Former GA, Matara

Continued from yesterday

Minister Moragoda has said that the biggest challenge to market privatisation is the people of Sri Lanka. |They don’t necessarily see the connection between privatisation and their well being.(August 4, 2002) What the general public see in any privatisation is the selling off of assets to foreign multinationals and the rich in Sri Lanka. They cannot forget how Shell Gas repeatedly increased the prices.

Let us look at what Prima is doing to us. The handing over of flour milling on a monopoly basis to Prima by Hon Jayawardena in the early Eighties is having its true repercussions only now. Then Prima was given the sole right to mill all the wheat flour that we required, retaining the bran. This was not a bad arrangement because the purchase of the wheat as well as the distribution of the flour remained in the hands of the Government. Of course it would have been better for the Government to have encouraged the private sector in Sri Lanka to have opened up flour mills. In the Fifties the Sri Lankans successfully tackled paddy milling and they had the expertise to easily handle flour milling.

The profits made by Prima went to the shareholders in Singapore and did not stay in Srilanka. In 2001, when the Prima agreement came up for review the PA Government sold the right to purchase wheat as well as the distribution of flour within the island to Prima and grabbed some foreign exchange. The sequel was a shortage of flour a few months ago. Then it was alleged that Prima had sold flour stocks to the Maldives at a profit sacrificing the Sri Lankan consumer. In July 2002 there was a shortage of flour again and the CWE had threatened to import flour if Prima does not solve it. Working in Districts as the Government Agent, I was in charge of the stocking and distribution of flour and this was a sacred task as the people had to be fed. We maintained buffer stocks and any officer who failed was punished severely. You hand over the task of feeding the people to a profit motivated private company- and a foreign one at that and this will be the undoing of Sri Lanka’s food security. This is the message that the Government has to learn.

Hand over what is remaining of our telecom and one will find the rates increasing and in times of a national crisis the Government will not have any power over our communication system. Hand over the petrol filling stations and even petrol handling will be in the hands of multinationals who can hold us to ransom. It was reported that our Insurance Corporation that last year earned a billion rupees as profit is to be privatised. We have over the years privatised a number of paying ventures on a payment and fritted away the proceeds in meeting budget debates. Naturally the Finance Ministezr is lamenting that the Government coffers are empty. How can there be money coming in when paying assets are privatised. Have we not ourselves created the problem. It reminds me of the common saying - put serpents within one’s own cloth and keep shouting that they are biting you-(sarama assata nai damagena kevo kevo kiyala kegahanava). It is absurd to think of privatisation as something that will help the country.

It will only ruin the country. The proceeds will be fritted away in educational payments for foreign universities, payments for luxury imports- and for the foreign travel of our sixty odd ministers and their entourages, leaving the service in the hands of a foreign miltinational that will fleece the people and make a profit. All this to please the IMF and get their blessings. It is not only poor countries like Sri Lanka that had got ruined by privatisation. Even a rich State like California suffered badly in the privatisation of its electricity distribution system and it had to pay and get back the distribution systems. It was also found that giant private firms like Enron had massaged their statistics and documents in order to increase the prices to the State of California. Take the UK, the privatisation of British Rail, once the best rail system in the world is today in ruination. The repeated rail crashes tell of how the private companies had taken riches away without funding technological advance methods that had to be installed to look after the commuters whom they should have served first. Such technological advance systems are common in European Railways. It is hoped that the UNF Government will take a hard look at their budget as well as the manner in which they propose ruining the country by privatising assets and borrowing money. It is true that the earlier PA Government is also at fault for seeking loans and incurring debt and especially for floating the Rupee.

Though it is generally said that the UNP is the party of the rich, in my experience in the Fifties and the Sixties it did take care of the poor. That was their guiding principle. Take the land development schemes, the small industries, rural development and agricultural development policies- all were meant to help the poor people get on their feet. In implementing these policies the officers were charged with the motto of service to the masses and I can vouch for the fact that the UNP Prime Minister, Hon. Dudley Senanayake, Ministers Banda, Asoka Karunaratne, Vimala Kannangara, Imbulana, Hurulle, with whom I have worked spent their lives totally dedicated to serve the people. It is hoped that the leadership of the UNP today will get the message that its policies have to get reoriented to serve the people. It is not up to them to serve the IMF masters. Instead of serving the people who voted them into power if they continue to serve the IMF masters then they had better know that their ignominious end is in sight.

Concluded

— Centre for Global Poverty Alleviation, London