Dr Harsha de Silva replies

Reference our front page news report of April 24, 2012 titled 'Economic Analyst debunks Harsha's claim', on the question of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka's computation of the GDP per capita and connected issues, and some of Dr Harsha de Silva MP's views on them, Dr de Silva has sent us a couple of clarifications.

Firstly, he says that the following paragraph which was contained in another English language newspaper report sets out what was actually said by him on some of the issues raised.

This news story was referred to by us in our report of April 24.

"The technical validity of Central Bank's GDP number and per capita computation is not in question. However, it had the moral responsibility to include a post-balance sheet disclosure that the rupee depreciated to Rs 113.90 to a dollar by the end of 2011 and thereafter to Rs 130 within the first two and half months of this year. This was not done. The Central Bank that preaches good governance and ethical financial reporting did not make this critical disclosure," Dr de Silva says in his clarification, 'To say I said that the calculation was wrong is very different from saying it was technically correct but a significant disclosure was left out'.

Dr de Silva was clarifying the following paragraph in our news report which said: "MP de Silva had stated there had been a miscalculation of per capita income in the report, and to prove his point he even referred to a part of the article written by Central Bank former Deputy Governor W A Wijewardena published in an English newspaper."