Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe says that he will continue to remain as the country’s Prime Minister if NDF candidate Sajith Premadasa wins the upcoming Presidential Election.
He made these comments during a special press conference held at Temple Trees in Colombo today (30), to reveal the ruling government’s performance and achievements up to date.
Asked about the election defeat suffered by the United National Party (UNP) at the last Local Authorities in 2018, the PM said that they went through a difficult time in that period.
“There were droughts in Sri Lanka. There was shortage of fertilizer and due to the drought the cost of living had gone up. So those were matters that affected us. Secondly it affected everyone in that there were a large number of people who didn’t get nominations from parties,” he said.
Wickremesinghe stated that those who didn’t get nominations went across to different parties and personal factors also played a big role because it was difficult to establish a stable administrations in many places because of these personal votes that had moved.
The Premier was also asked about the new plan they are formulating to speed up the economy after the election. He stated that the government had a problem of a “big debt” when they came to power and that they had to stabilize the economy and get confidence back.
“As we got in we couldn’t even do foreign borrowings to pay off the foreign loans,” he said.
However, he said that its different now as the economy stabilized in 2018 and that the primary budget had a surplus. He stated that again in 2020 everyone expects them to perform the same way.
“Revenue has gone up. We have cleared the ground. New laws have come in. The infrastructure for development has been laid.”
“Investors won’t come just because you give tax incentives. You must have the necessary investments,” he said.
“We are on the verge of a takeoff and we are in a region that is growing fast,” he said. However, he noted that they are also doing a transition. “We are now an upper middle income economy and we have to go into a full upper economy.”
He said this means more training, more jobs, the transition and modernizing agriculture. “We are ready for it now. I think we have created the grounds where we can go ahead. Others were only obstacles.”
Wickremesinghe said that in the wake of the Easter Sunday terror attacks, the government managed to turnaround the economy within a mere six months.
“If you take the Easter bombs, actually the economy turned around within 6 months. Most people thought it will take a year and a half or two. But within 6 months we were able to turn this around.”
“So it shows that it is a resilient economy that we are having and the next five years if you go ahead with this you can have growth,” he added.
Wickremesinghe said that they are looking at around 7.5% growth while the Chamber of Commerce in their plan has said that the country can go up to 8% growth.
“But we think with 7.5% growth we can achieve the targets for the next 5 years.”
Asked about the possibility of the UNP claiming victory at the upcoming presidential poll and the prevailing trends with regard to voters, the PM said that in 2014 everyone wrote them off and then on January 8th 2015 they got the votes.
“Remember that we have bulk vote. You are looking at only one vote that is the local authority. In this that is not the case. It’s a choice. It’s a real choice not between individuals but what do you choose,” he said.
“We have done that earlier. We did that in 2014 and 2015. We’ll do it again. We have turned the economy around so we must turn the electorate around also.”
Responding to a question from a journalist as to whether the economic plans mentioned by him would be implemented under his premiership next year, he said yes and that he will be the Prime Minister and Sajith Premadasa will be the President.
