Sri Lanka is burning. Colombo has borrowed billions of dollars from China alone for infrastructure projects – many of which turned out to be white elephants mired in corruption. To keep everyone happy, the government slashed taxes by half and printed more and more money. The rest followed naturally: the country now faces bankruptcy and a foreign exchange crisis that forced a currency devaluation and has impacted the supply of basic goods such as food, medicine and fuel. So, the hungry people took to the streets, torching police cars, army vehicles and anything that connotes the corrupt power, leading to the resignation of many ministers.  

Corruption, acute nepotism, economic mismanagement and debt have resulted in the biggest economic crisis since the country’s independence. The Covid sanitary crisis and the war in Ukraine only made a very bad situation that much worse.

None of this is alien to us: our debt is soaring at a dizzying speed and our irresponsible government’s spending spree goes on unchecked. The excesses and mismanagement, along with the criminal waste of public funds highlighted by the Audit Report and the Public Account Committee have hit deaf ears. More duty-free cars, first class travel, entertainment allowances, per diem, board membership fees, exorbitant salaries for cronies, inordinately high contracts for those who are in the good books of Government in virtually all ministries, flouting the established procedures, grand and unaffordable projects…you mention it, we waste money on it. And we borrow more, kicking the can further down the road.

Does this sound any different from what has led to the current crisis in Sri Lanka? I hate to say that it doesn’t. In fact, we have aggravating circumstances which might lead us to the dreaded crisis sooner than we think: a minister of finance who knows little about how to run a ministry: outside partisan political nominations, he has never held any high position that we know of. In fact, we know some of the positions he was not considered for. He compounds his lack of experience and knowledge with such a rare arrogance and exceptionalism that his ignorance is unlikely to change. He also loves soundbites and the sound of his own voice: 650,000 tourists, one million tourists, growth forecast at 6%. He tops this up with an unparalleled habit of squeezing the maximum out of his position. If several ministers were criticised for squandering money in inanely useless trips to the Dubai exhibition, he shone by visiting twice! Who can beat that? As if that were not enough, he dragged with him his cronies from the Board of Investment for more fun and more squandering of public funds.

Our situation is made that much worse with the incompetence of our other ministers, who shoot from the hip. They take the most inane decisions, wait for the public to show a deserved amount of anger and they backpedal. Think of the cooking oil crisis, where the minister announces a shortage that did not exist. Then he realised that he had to ask the importers. By then, whole families had left everything behind and ganged up to sweep the supermarket shelves clean of anything that looked like oil! Think of the payment of the pension: change of payment date, public outrage and then back to normal. Think of the vaccine deadlines: setting a grossly unrealistic date, impossibly long queues in the sun and rain, people fighting, uproar, then the date was extended. Shoot, wait and once it’s too late, backpedal. Think of anything and tell me if these ministers can think at all!

So, if Sri Lanka’s debt is at 116%, ours is officially at 101%. A big chunk of our real debt is carefully hidden in Special Purpose Vehicles, which also offer the advantage of avoiding accountability.

So, we spend more, we borrow more, and still more. Then we give freebies we can’t afford to keep the population quiet. As Sri Lanka did. Let us hope that their present does not turn out to be our future!