COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s government on Thursday proposed amending the constitution to trim presidential powers and beef up anti-corruption powers to help shore up stability and defuse unrest provoked by the country’s worst financial crisis in decades.
The International Monetary Fund meanwhile said after bailout talks with the bankrupt island nation that it should stamp out corruption and substantially raise taxes to rescue its economy,.
Representatives from the global lender of last resort have just concluded a 10-day visit to the capital Colombo to map out a resolution to the South Asian country’s unprecedented economic crisis.
Their meetings follow months of lengthy blackouts and days-long queues for petrol as a financial crunch leaves Sri Lanka without the funds to meet its energy needs.
But the IMF said more work was needed to set the nation’s finances right and repair its runaway fiscal deficit before a deal could be struck on a funding arrangement to address its balance of payments crisis.
“Given the low level of revenues, far-reaching tax reforms are urgently needed,” the lender said in a statement.
Sri Lanka needed to “reduce corruption vulnerabilities”, contain spiralling inflation and bring an end to costly energy subsidies that had long been a drain on the government budget without hurting more vulnerable citizens, the statement added.
The South Asian island of 22 million people is close to running out of fuel and has struggled for months to find enough US dollars to pay for essential imports such as food, cooking gas and medicine.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who critics blame for the financial crisis for having given key posts to relatives and being slow to seek an IMF bailout, has been under prolonged pressure to step down, though he has said he plans to stay on until his term ends in 2024.
Two of his brothers resigned earlier as prime minister and finance minister following weeks of street protests.
The proposed amendment, whose draft was published on Thursday, would establish a constitutional council and nine independent commissions to improve governance. The commissions would work to promote human rights, increase audit oversight of government agencies and bolster anti-graft investigations.
The amendment could be presented to parliament in July, Justice Minister Wijedasa Rajapakshe said last week. It might undergo further changes before it is eventually passed into law.
Critics, however, say the amendment did not go far enough to tackle the demands of protesters. – Reuters/AFP
