General Elections 2004 - RESULTS
Thursday, 22 April 2004  
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Boon for farming community

The restoration of the fertilizer subsidy by the Government is bound to have a salutary impact on the country's food production and bring radiant smiles of relief to the faces of the farming community. An initiative springing from the benevolent guidance of President Kumaratunga, this measure could form the basis of bountiful harvests and widespread rural contentment.

This fresh focus on the agricultural sector should win widespread public commendation and bring back to paddy farming the status it deserves. For, it was forgotten by myopic, Siri Kotha big-wigs that agriculture remains the backbone of our economy.

A duty was cast on the former administration to make the farmers lot lighter by ensuring bearable fertilizer costs but this need was benignly neglected out of greater concern for the fortunes of parasitic businessmen. In fact, the former UNF governments indifference to farmer interests ensured its electoral collapse in the Rice Bowl regions of the country.

We are glad that this anti-people focus is now being rectified. Not only must paddy production costs be brought down through measures such as the fertilizer subsidy, but the marketability of the produce ensured as well.

While agriculture remains the backbone of our economy, the majority of Lankans continue to dwell and labour in the rural sector. It is imperative that the latter are helped to keep the wheels of the economy humming.

Those in the urban sector little realise that problems such as rising paddy production costs and unmarketable produce could bring death and misery to those who grow for us our daily rice. Food imports and mushrooming junk food outlets have bred in particularly urban dwellers a sense of complacency that paddy farming could be dispensed with. Such attitudes could sow among us the seeds of economic havoc.

The State should be right back in the centre of these affairs. By reducing production costs and ensuring the sale of paddy, the State should turn paddy farming into a viable proposition once again.

It is up to the State to also restore to the paddy farmer his indispensability. If the younger generation is shunning the paddy field, it is mainly because the dignity of paddy farming has been allowed to erode by past governments. Ensuring the profitability of paddy production is one sure way of restoring this sagging image.

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South Asia's economic resurgence

The World Bank had good news for South Asia yesterday. It said South Asian economic growth will peak in 2004 and sustain a rapid pace next year, helped by outsourcing of work from industrial powers.

Economic output growth would step up from 6.5 per cent last year to 7.2 per cent in 2004 before relaxing to 6.7 per cent in 2005, said the World Bank's Global Development Finance Report. India, accounting for three-quarters of regional output, would lead the advance. It has already recorded a growth rate exceeding eight per cent.

An economic growth rate exceeding seven per cent points to South Asia's collective dynamism. The region, technically one of the poorest in the world, is home to one-fifth of its population, a huge market. Governments of all South Asian countries have pledged to accelerate economic growth.

More investors have placed their confidence in South Asia as the region has become more stable in the light of peace talks between India and Pakistan. Regional trade initiatives of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has further boosted international confidence.

The Bank identified several factors that impede growth in South Asia. Inflexibility in labour markets, weak bankruptcy frameworks and infrastructure bottlenecks are among them. The latter is particulary significant as far as investment is concerned. Roads and the power supply remain weak points in South Asia, whose governments must give priority to infrastructure development.

South Asia has to face another challenge: The phase-out of the "multifibre arrangement" in 2005. The agreement allocates quotas of clothing and textiles that developing nations with cheap labour can export to rich countries.

Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, which have sizeable garment industries, must find new markets for their products and further improve their quality to successfully compete in the world market.

South Asia is mired in poverty. All seven South Asian countries have various programs to alleviate poverty. Sri Lanka's Samurdhi program, which targets nearly two million families, is being closely studied by many countries.

It is a pity that intra-South Asian trade is still low. Sri Lanka and India began the trend towards greater trade interaction with their Free Trade Agreement. Now other countries are moving in the same direction. But the ultimate aim is a South Asian Free Trade Area and even a common currency.

The latter still remains a suggestion, but South Asian countries should earnestly consider it. A borderless South Asia has the potential to become an economic powerhouse.

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