“I wish I had a magic wand, ” said the Chairman of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce Vish Govindasamy, contemplating the future of the country on a recent edition of LMDtv. And he offered the view that “the primary reason the nation is in the position it is in today is due to the lack of foreign exchange.”

Furthermore, he asserted that the country’s lack of creditworthiness is to blame for the situation, reiterating that “nobody wants to lend money and they don’t even want to accept any of our banks’ letters of credit because they’re not worth anything.”

It has to be said that since 2020, the chamber has been urging the government to initiate a discussion with the IMF. “We could have gone with a lot of respect to the IMF – we had creditworthiness then. We could have gone to our debtors with a lot more respect than negotiators. Now we have defaulted. We’re talking to debtors to restructure debt without any credibility,” he lamented.

“Tourism is zero, and our remittances are less than a third of what they used to be. We cannot run this country by virtue of just our export proceeds,” Govindasamy went on to say.

Waxing eloquent, he quoted the words of John. F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

As he believes that the crisis will continue for some years to come, Govindasamy insisted that “we need to change. The public also needs to make a huge sacrifice if we are to get through this economic crisis.”

Observing that some government owned assets do not yield returns on investment, Govindasamy said: “Maybe they need to let them go. You cannot have free medicine, free education, free everything and not pay taxes. Every single one of us pays money to the government so it can run them. The government can only print money. The more [money] it prints, the poorer we become.”

“Being an SME in this climate is probably the most challenging thing. I would say cash is king and to hold onto it. Two, reduce borrowings. After the recent Treasury Bill rate, interest rates will be close to 25 percent. One cannot borrow at that rate and run a business. Three, increase productivity,” he said, sharing his advice with small and medium enterprises.

Govindasamy also proposed that those employed by the public sector be given the option of working abroad for a five year sabbatical, saying: “I think it would be a great step. I wish the younger, talented state sector would take that positively and go overseas, find opportunities and help Sri Lanka during this difficult time.”

The chamber chairman stated: “The magic words in this catastrophic climate are ‘bridge financing.’ The inability to secure a staff level agreement before the IMF team left our shores was due to the misfortune of the country being engulfed by public debt. Sri Lanka needs to dig deep to see who its friends are and generate bridging finance.”

“It’s hard to talk about corruption in isolation; it’s about what we call the ease of doing business,” he explained, and emphasised that “with the ease of doing business, corruption could be prevented.”

His perspective is that corruption will disappear when all Sri Lankans agree that they’re equal, and when there would be no need to please political or governmental officials by introducing more digitalisation and an online approval system.

As a final thought, he said: “The GDP of India and China is very high. Their growth rate is very high. They’re very developed. If Amazon wants to come and set up a warehouse to ship from here to India or China, our systems have to be more straightforward. Our market is right there.”

Drawing the conversation to a close on this edition of LMDtv, Govindasamy elaborated: “Sri Lanka’s geographic location could be leveraged to attract FDI. We are in a very logistically attractive location in the Indian Ocean. We have two superpowers as our neighbours – India and China.”