Foreign investors guaranteed a corruption-free future under NPP - Harini Amarasuriya

China had been an “easy source of money” for past governments and the National People’s Power (NPP) wants to ensure future investment isn’t wasteful, said Harini Amarasuriya, a lawmaker and a member of the NPP.

During an interview with the Bloomberg news in Colombo, Amarasuriya, an academic who has become one of the more public faces of the NPP’s election campaign, has stated: “We don’t want easy money coming in to fund unproductive projects and not care about corruption.” 

“That’s what we expect of any country, and that’s how we would want it to be with China”, she assured.

Amarasuriya said the NPP wants to maintain ties with China since the country had been one of the few to back Sri Lanka when it faced global scrutiny for human rights violations as the civil war drew to a close.

“We are cognizant of the fact that China has politically backed us in sensitive moments,” she said. “And we want to maintain those relations.”

Meanwhile, commenting to Bloomberg News, a senior economist at Frontier Research in Colombo, Thilina Panduwawela expressed “Markets do not have past experience to make a judgment call on NPP policies”. 

“And the election itself is too close to call and that is why there is some uncertainty in markets”, he added.

Amarasuriya said her party was against some of the tax measures Wickremesinghe’s government was implementing to meet the IMF targets. Even so, she acknowledged that the conditions of the loan program, including the primary balance and the debt-to-GDP ratio, were “fairly standard.”

NPP’s presidential candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s election manifesto, which was launched on August 26, proposes a number of tax amendments and more oversight on government spending.

He’s pledged to increase the income tax-free threshold and “equitably” amend rates and tax brackets. He also wants to remove some essential health, education and food items from the 18% value-added tax to make them more affordable, Amarasuriya said. 

The tax threshold has had a huge impact on the middle class and professionals, she said, leading to a severe brain drain with over 3,000 doctors as well as IT and banking personnel having left the country.

Amarasuriya added that the current administration “has not paid enough attention” to some other IMF conditions, including bolstering social security networks and eradicating graft.

With corruption, the approach will be to “clean it from the top” where all elected representatives have to behave based on a code of conduct that is strictly enforced, she said. There will be restrictions on government appointments and the tender processes — two areas where “corruption gets initiated,” Amarasuriya said.

Foreign investors have “nothing to fear” as the party will make it easier for business by eliminating corruption and putting in systems, she added.

--With inputs from Bloomberg News--