Govt will formulate laws to repatriate USD 53 Billion | Daily News
Research firm in New York reveals billions of Dollars deposited during last 12 years:

Govt will formulate laws to repatriate USD 53 Billion

Govt looking at removing loopholes in the law in this regard:
Last year alone our exporters did not remit their earnings worth USD 3 billion:

The Government will formulate new laws to repatriate billions of US Dollars which have been deposited in foreign countries by the exporters, Justice, Prisons Affairs and Constitutional Reforms Minister Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe told the Daily News yesterday.

“Exporters who earn Dollars do not bring that earnings back to Sri Lanka but they deposit it in foreign banks. They bring very limited amount. We don’t have to face foreign exchange crisis if we can get these money back to Sri Lanka”, the Minister said.

The Government is making a renewed attempt to get exporters, who have kept their export earnings overseas, to remit them to Sri Lanka. The Minister said that the Government is looking at removing the loopholes in the law in this regard.

The Minister recently told Parliament that Sri Lanka had been deprived of foreign remittances worth USD 53 billion in the last 12 years, as some exporters had been depositing their monies in foreign countries.“In the last year alone, these exporters had not remitted their earnings worth USD 3 billion. The entire foreign loan component of Sri Lanka is USD 52 billion.

This means, Sri Lanka could have been made debt free, if the country had received the above-mentioned forex income from the exporters,” the Minister explained.

He said the information on export income, which was not brought into the country, were revealed by a research firm in New York, USA.“I made the revelation in Parliament, with the intention of preventing that in the future.

There were allegations that an Amendment to the law, which was done during the Yahapalana period and also paved the way for this practice.

We are now looking at amending that law again. We are also discussing a methodology to get the forex earnings of the exporters back to the country,” he explained.

 


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