Lanka will continue to work with UN: minister

Sri Lanka will continue to work with the United Nations (UN) and other institutions by aligning the government’s policy strategy with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and targets to be achieved by 2030, Finance and Mass Media Minister Mangala Samaraweera said.
Addressing the World Bank/International Monetary Fund annual meeting in Washington recently, minister Samaraweera said Sri Lanka’s broad development strategy had focused on a three-pillared agenda – democratisation, reconciliation, and sustainable and equitable development with employment generation that transmits the benefits of growth across the wider society.
“Sri Lanka’s growth model would be private sector driven with exports and foreign direct investments (FDI) as key pillars, supported by technological advancement and innovation. In this process, we are committed to improve human capital and skills, set up globally recognised regulatory mechanisms and investment practices, in addition to the improvement of physical infrastructure, and create the best possible enabling environment for Sri Lanka to attract more businesses, trade and investment to become a higher income country,” he said.
He said the government had introduced three well thought-out frameworks to manage the country’s fiscal policy, monetary policy and foreign exchange operations to ensure sound macro-economic policies and added that state owned enterprises were also being reformed to ensure efficient management and strengthen financial viability.
He also said that they were working, with commitment, to move to a flexible inflation targeting regime in the medium term to ensure sustained low inflation and to an exchange rate regime based on clear parameters to achieve a competitive currency.
“Measures are being taken to boost market access through deepening and widening the current free trade agreements (FTA) with India; invigorating the FTA with Pakistan; signing new economic partnership agreements with China and Singapore. This will result in preferential access to markets with over 3bn people, which is expected to boost domestic and foreign investments going forward through leveraging the trade/investment nexus,” he added.