Reminiscences

Rising like Phoenix from the Ashes

Ravi Ladduwahetty

Retired Central Bank Governor Amarananda Somasiri Jayawardena reminisces

January 31, 1996. The Central Bank headquarters in Janadhipathi Mawatha, Fort. Governor Amarananda Somasiri Jayawardena, barely in the post two months since November 1995, was chairing a meeting with his Deputy Governors in his ninth floor office. Suddenly, terrorists opened fire.

The Navy, adjacent to the Central Bank, retaliated. Then, the lorry bomb, a minimum 50 kilos, exploded. Pamphlets said the lorry heading towards the Central Bank was carrying a heavy bomb. Had anyone stopped it, the explosion would have been at that point.

Governor Jayawardana relaxing in his library at his Nugegoda home. Picture by Saliya Rupasinghe.

A terrorist with a shoulder- high Rocket Propelled Grenade fired at the Ceylinco building. Within minutes, Ceylinco was in flames. Forty one persons dead. Over eighty injured.

Bank of England Governor Sir Edward George tells counterpart Governor Jayawardena that had the saga was written, he had a publisher!! The latter has set himself the challenge! The documentary will be released soon, meant as a role model for disaster management of Central Banks worldwide.

“There was no money lost and the most redeeming factor was that there was a back up of the entire system at the Staff Training College at Rajagiriya. What we effectively lost was a single working day”, Jayawardena told Daily News Reminiscences at his Nugegoda residence.

Irreparable losses were from books and administrative reports over 100 years preserved in the library, among the best in Asia. Luckily, the US Congress Library, the Governors of the Banks of England and New Zealand came to our rescue with valuable books. All lost documents are now electronically documented, can be accessed from any computer terminal in the new library, he reminisced.

Original civil contractor- Germany’s Zublin, which constructed Central Banks worldwide and the modern CB building 10 years before, offered to restore the building at the original cost, in a prestige exercise. A huge painting of a Phoenix rising from the ashes by veteran artist Thilaka Abeysinghe also adorns the Bank lobby now.

He joined the Central Bank as a Junior Executive in 1958, a career spanning 46 years in different capacities in finance and economic administration. He was interviewed by a Monetary Board team headed by Chairman Sir Arthur Ranasinghe, also then Governor. After a four- year Peradeniya University Economics Honours Degree, he completed it in three years. He entered Peradeniya with exemption from the general qualifying exam. All posts he held were on CBSL secondment.

Attractions in joining the Central Bank was not only the Economics Degree but also because it provided opportunities for post graduate studies overseas on full pay, the highest in the then state sector with Provident Fund and pension benefits as well, he said.

He proceeded to the prestigious London School of Economics for his Master’s Degree in Economics in 1962 and returned in 1964. Meanwhile, he was promoted as Senior Economist Grade 2 after five years service.

On his return from the LSE, another career turning point was a joint research paper with a Cambridge University qualified Economist colleague, he documented for the Central Bank bulletin, on how the British dominated the tea plantations in Sri Lanka.

The article was how industry supply chains from estates to warehousing, shipping were dominated by thirteen Britishers!! It also said how Colombo teas to Africa were channeled through London!!

Later he was advised not to collide with the British Plantation Raj. “This aroused the interest of quite a few here. We earned a certain degree of notoriety for this”, he chuckled.

It was Plantation Industries Minister Dr. Colvin R. De Silva who got his Ministry Secretary Doric De Souza to phone Jayawardena, inviting him to be the Ministry’s Economic Advisor and Director Planning.

After a two year stint there, he retuned to the Central Bank as Deputy Director Economic Research and Finance Minister Felix Dias Bandaranaike invited him to be Bank of Ceylon General Manager. “ Sir, I have no experience in commercial banking,” he told Felix but the Minister insisted.

What the Minister wanted was a broader vision for the BoC and a cushion between the staff and Chairman, his own Brother-in-Law Gamini Wickremanayake (also President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka) who had an unpredictable temperament despite being a visionary!

Then with the Land Reforms Commission, Jayawardena also served as Director Settlements with former President Chandrika Kumaratunga also as Director. “Chandrika, the idealist, was really interested in establishing collective farms to which she was cautioned against getting into difficulty, he said.

With the LRC, Colvin tried to retain some of the best plantations with the State Plantation Corporation and the -then newly formed Janatha Estates Development Board, he recalled.

He returned to the Central Bank as Director Economic Research. Then he read for his Master of Public Administration Degree at the presitigous Harvard University in 1974-5. It was also as Director of Economic Research that he was also appointed as the International Monetary Fund Executive Director for Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh based in Washington, a stint from 1981 to 1986.

“I had to look after Sri Lanka’s interest in the backdrop of economic boom and when there was heavy commitments from the World Bank and the IMF, he said.

On his return he was promoted Deputy Governor, a post that one cannot be removed unless of a grave misdemeanour.

Then he was invited to be the Secretary to the Ministry of Industries, Scientific Affairs, whose Minister was subsequent Premier and Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe.

It was at that time that all the stringent regulations governing imports was liberalised after elongated periods of tight controls and the privatisation of unprofitable state ventures was in full swing. “Some of them such as Ceylon Oxygen and Kelani Tyres are really flourishing now”, he said.

It was also at that time the first Advisory Council on Industry was formed on directives of Wickremesinghe in 1993, a public/ private sector partnership, whose first Chairman was the late Aitken Spence Group Chairman Michael Lloyd Mack.

Jayawardena was Chairman of the BoC in pre 1994, making him the first BoC Chairman and General Manager under two different Governments.

With the advent of the PA Government in 1994, President/ Finance and Planning Minister Chandrika Kumaratunga invited him to be her Treasury Secretary. Jayawardena responded: “I have no knowledge of regimented command economies.”

Then all Chandrika requested from me was to brief her on Treasury affairs, how it was run and also logistics of making a market economy work with a human face”, he said.

He retuned as Central Bank Governor in 1998, continuing till 2004 where highlights included financial sector reforms, where banking supervision was tightened and creation of markets for government securities as treasury bills and bonds.

A little known fact was that he was among the pioneer lecturers when Vidyalankara and Vidyodaya Universities commenced their Sinhala Medium.

“We had to lecture at nights after working in the Central Bank during daytime. So, most of the first generation Sinhala lecturers of both universities were my students who have done brilliantly well”, he chuckled.

Born in Matale in 1936 and an exceedingly brilliant student in his childhood and youth himself, his primary education was at St. Agnes Convent, Matale where he was promoted from Grade II to V!! Then at St. Thomas’ College, Matale he received another merit promotion to Grade XII!! He passed his Senior School Certificate in 1950 in the first division with exemption from the London Matriculation with four distinctions and three credits, so rare at the time, that the college gave all students a half holiday !! He was in Bede House, taking part in literary activities.

It was Royal College Colombo for his HSC where he also carried away the Henry De Mel Prize for Sinhala. He was also awarded Peradeniya University Athletics Colours, running the Marathon and emerging 18th out of 226. While a university student, he served his alma mater as a voluntary teacher.