The government will abolish the carbon tax from end of this month, Minister of Finance Mangala Samaraweera said yesterday.
Speaking at a special press conference at the Ministry he said that the proposal in this regard would be submitted to parliament for approval on November 23.
The carbon tax was introduced at the last budget and the Minister however said that payments already made to it cannot be returned.
Asked to give reasons as to why the economic growth rate is to fall down almost in par with Afghanistan he said that this happened only in the last quarter of the year. Before the Political coup in November last year the economic growth rate was around 3.5% and after 52 days it decreased to below 2%. The Easter Sunday blasts also attributed to the slowing down of the economic growth.
“However things are now falling in to place and we will be able to post a strong economic growth in the next quarter.”
Samaraweera explained that Sri Lanka’s economy was in the ICU when they took over the government nearly five years ago and today the economy has moved up from the ICU to almost ‘discharge state’ from the hospital due to timely economic policies adopted by the government. He however said that the government keeps on paying debts taken at a high interest rate by the previous government and in 2020 the total payable amount would be Rs. 1.1 trillion. Minister also said that Sri Lanka will soon set up a debt management agency giving more independence to the Central Bank.
State Finance Minister Eran Wickramaratne said for the first time after several decades Sri Lanka would be posting a ‘primary balance’ this year.
Although a 25% of Sri Lankan workforce in engaged in the Agriculture sector they only contribute 8% to the economy. The reason for this is lack of technology and we have addressed this issue by providing duty free imports of machinery, he added.
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