Mangala debunks Ranil's claims

MINISTER Mangala Samaraweera who is also the chief campaign coordinator of UPFA presidential candidate Mahinda Rajapakse has expressed sympathy with Ranil Wickremesinghe for the level to which the latter had descended in uttering falsehoods so as to suggest that the UPFA has not been able to obtain any aid pledged at the Tokyo summit and that he (Wickremesinghe) will be receiving a sum of Rs. 50 billion US dollars from President George Bush, once he assumes power as the Head of State.

Wickremesinghe according to Minister Samaraweera has stated that foreign aid to the country will start flowing only if he (Wickremesinghe ) becomes President and that the UPFA had even failed to obtain the Tokyo aid pledged to the country.

Issuing a media release, Minister Samaraweera said he was certain that the people will give the UNP Presidential candidate a fitting reply on the 17th of this month, for attempting to treat them as fools.

He said no Foreign country or lending institution considers personalities when they decide to provide aid to a particular country. All such aid is given to the Government of that country.

It was only the other day that former US Secretary of State Richard Armitage stated that US aid to Sri Lanka is not in anyway influenced by which Government was in power.

Accordingly the UPFA Government has been able obtain the US$ 4.5 billion pledged at the Tokyo summit in addition to other US$ 7.7 billion in other foreign aid.

While US$ 4.6 billion of this will be used towards development, the balance US$ 3.1 billion has been set apart for tsunami reconstruction and rehabilitation, the release states.

Although according what Ranil Wickremesinghe says he can obtain aid only from the US the above aid to the UPFA was given by countries such as Britain and China as well in addition to America.

During the Sri Lanka Aid Group meeting in Tokyo in 2003 Sri Lanka was pledged US$ 4.5 billion. That is for four years from 2003 to 2006. Of this, a total of US$ 3397.5 million were loans while grants amounted to only US$ 735.9 million.

Of these loans and grants as much as 69 per cent were from the World Bank, ADB and the Japanese Government. The World Bank component was US$ 1075 million, ADB US$ 961 dollars million and Japan one billion dollars.

Of these loans and grants Sri Lanka received US$ 431 million in 2003, US$ 1022 million in 2004 and US$ 277 million as at September 2005. Before the end of this year the Government is due for another US$ 475 million.

Accordingly by December 2005 Sri Lanka would have received US$ 2,205 million dollars out of the Tokyo aid package.

Therefore, while the Government has not lost even one cent of Tokyo aid as claimed by Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sri Lanka rejected the IMF offer made at the Tokyo summit. This is because the Government did not agreed to their recommendations to restructure its poverty alleviation programmes.

The IMF agreed to provider US$ 697 million towards macro economic management. Although US$ 85 million from this was obtained in 2003 the UPFA rejected the balance funding. This is because the Government was not amenable to the conditions laid down by the IMF that were inimical to the country.

These included the privatisation of water resources, retrenchment of 300,000 Government Servants, the abolition of pensions, the privatisation of the People's Bank and the creation of a Revenue Authority.

Minister Samaraweera questioned whether Wickremesinghe was ready to accept these conditions to get the foreign aid that he has mentioned.