Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Famous last words?

The President has been exhorting the people to stop thing of themselves as poor. He said Sri Lanka has maintained a gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of more than 6.0 percent for three years running.

"In 2001 economic growth was negative and people said the economy collapsed. When economic growth is around 7 percent for three years, foreign reserves at the highest level, unemployment at the lowest, is the economy falling? Is this a joke or is it a treachery?"

Presumably the man is claiming credit for the improved economic performance since 2001. The tsunami, a global boom and the UNP probably had more to do with this than anything else but let us wait a while and see how the policies of 2005-7 translate to growth.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Haven't we had it up to our eyeballs with broken promises, cover-ups, scams and sheer nonsensical explanations of the state of the economy in general and country in particular? It's got to a point that even spending time listening to this crap is worthless.

Jack Point said...

Very true, but what I am doing is pinning down a few key statements for easy reference in future.

pissu perera said...

someone should put mahinda maama in touch with an economist other than PB.
then there's that.

wonder if that's a joke or treachery according to the pres.

pissu perera said...

oops, forgot the url
http://www.thebottomline.lk/2008/04/09/B43.htm

Jack Point said...

Thanks for the link Pissu.

Even more intriguing is this one:

http://www.lbo.lk/fullstory.php?nid=88101132

It looks like the wheels are coming off the government. Lets see how 2008 turns out.