President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has said that he totally banned the import of ethanol and substituted local produce, as a result of which the sugar cane cultivator is now in business. He has also said that he banned saffron imports and successfully substituted the locally cultivated variety. The same was done with pepper, he has said.
He was reciting some of the achievements of his Government in a recent speech. No doubt these were steps in the right direction – and nobody would have previously thought of these import substitutions that generated jobs, and spurred local production.
If these were the signal achievements of this Government, how was it that there was very little ground-level appreciation of his efforts? We hardly hear anyone say what a stupendous achievement Gotabaya Sir made possible with ethanol, or what a master stroke that was with saffron – never mind black pepper.
Why are the most touted achievements of the President apparently under a bushel? Are our people rank ingrates? Don’t they know that a revolution is turning on ethanol, even as he speaks?
Instead of raucous celebrations on ethanol or cheers about a “saffron revolution”, what the people have been vocalising is a litany about difficulties, shortages, and a forex crisis.
What gives? Why are this Government’s signal achievements going unsung?
It’s because, though the President may have his heart in the right place, there is no transformative change in the economy just because a few commodities have been produced at home.
In other words, the President has eminently got the small beer flawlessly right, but in the big picture, we are veering on near-disaster.
There are some countries that are having a bigger breakout moment growing poppy furtively; there is marijuana tourism in the Seychelles, making a bigger buck than we made on tourism since we embarked on that industry. No, this writer is not advocating marijuana hedonism (or tourism for that matter) in this Buddhist country, even though the maverick MP Diana Gamage suggested something to that effect in Parliament recently.
She made statements alluding to the fact that Sri Lanka is blessed with cannabis and its time to grow extensively, so that there can be a lucrative cannabis export industry. She said it wasn’t a drug and was all medicinal, and she had enough cannabis products at home, which she’s afraid to bring into Parliament.
This writer is not advocating a revival based on cannabis, but the lesson is that we need a production economy, and Diana in her maverick fashion teaches us that lesson. The country has been made into a small-time import substitution experiment, but that has got us nowhere near the promised breakout moment.
There is a distinct inability to think big and believe big, which is why the refrain is that “the President has had oodles of bad luck”. It’s what I hear from the proverbial man and woman on the street. The President, they say, is plagued by ill-luck, and that’s written in his star.
That may be why there is so much of looking up to Gnanakka, but that’s a different story. The story of ill-luck has a distinct genesis.
Covid is not necessarily ill-luck. Vietnam’s breakout moment was Covid, and the country had the best emerging economy of 2021, would you believe it? It was by far Asia’s top-performing economy during the Covid pandemic.
The genesis of the story that the President is plagued by ill-luck is that it’s all in the mind, and whether our powers that be have Gnanakka in mind to do something about that or not, what’s psychological is psychological. It’s not to suggest that handling the economy in the global period of Covid-related slump was a walk in the park.
But ill-luck is a perception. Stories are legion of countries that performed better than normal during the pandemic, and Vietnam is just one of them.
Small beer is small beer – and simple piecemeal import substitution is not revolutionary, period. It may be true that there were previous governments that didn’t think of any strategy to produce locally, in the large scale or small. To that extent, the ethanol and pepper experiments, etc. have worked. But that’s not a transformation, especially in the time of a pandemic when the economy is hit before we are out of the gate, due to the tourism slump, etc.
At the very least, small economies that aspire to breakout should be nimble enough to take the hits. This is explained in the book Open and Nimble: Finding Stable Growth in Small Economies (Leaderman and Lesniak). “Small economies tend to compensate for their export concentration by being nimble in the sense of being able to change their production and export structure relatively quickly over time.” That’s a direct quote.
We can’t think big, if, particularly during times of crisis, “small beer” is the only solution that comes to mind (i.e. ethanol substitution.) When Mahinda Rajapaksa was President, it’s known that he didn’t like the initial tourist board slogan of that time – “Sri Lanka, Small Miracle”.
It was changed to “Land Like No Other”. But it’s not merely the slogan that needs to be big. The slogan may even connote small or even tiny, but it’s the ideas that need to be big.
Ethanol substitution cannot be crowed about when the economy as a whole was essentially cramped by needless lockdowns, etc.
The office of the presidency in the main could not handle the optics. It was thought that the mere “optics” of not closing down would be devastating.
Vietnam didn’t think that way. There were never any nationwide lockdowns, but there were some of them in the so-called epicentres in that country. All the while “open and nimble” economic innovation took place, and Vietnam became the focus for industry that was displaced from China.
Just last week, President Rajapaksa congratulated the exporters for almost reaching pre-pandemic levels of export, as he said. But has that helped the forex situation or with regard to all other negative perceptions?
Hardly. Is that ill-luck, too? No, it’s because the economy has been hamstrung by “small thinking” and snuck away in a corner. The President is eternally in complaint mode, saying we were beset by the Covid ravages. It doesn’t help complaining when he has brought half the ravages upon himself and the economy by being so obsessed with the “optics”.
Import substitution has to be done with export in mind, in particular. Then again, even when there is minimal import substitution, it’s the export sector that matters.
Open and nimble is not about import substitution. It is about opening up breakout export opportunities and thinking big. There is no place in that equation for complaining how badly we were hit by Covid.
Yes, we were badly hit by Covid – who wasn’t? Vietnam was, too. We also had negatives such as a relative lack of foreign reserves and a debt crisis unlike, say Thailand, which in 2021 is classed above China as an emerging market. Our disadvantages, however, were all the more reason we had to be rational about Covid optics, and had to be 10 times more innovative than Thailand.
That didn’t happen, and there were no breakout moments, but there were enough dismal moments and melancholy days.
In some ways, the “small beer speech”, as it shall be anointed, about ethanol is emblematic. Gotabaya Rajapaksa bit off more than he could chew when he offered to transform the country as President. Yes, he nor anyone anticipated Covid, but if he was true leadership material, he would have had the presence of mind to move beyond ethanol and complaining eternally about Covid. Churchill didn’t say “nobody expected this bloody war”.
He said “we shall fight on the beaches”, and when someone said Britain’s neck would be wrung like that of a chicken, he said “some chicken, some neck”.
Leadership takes a little more than a semi-confessional speech. In fact, it takes a lot more than that.
(The writer is a former Editor-in-Chief of three national English language publications and a practising Attorney-at-Law. He is an Editors’ Guild award-winning columnist, and contributing writer and columnist for Nikkei Asian Review and South China Morning Post, while his editorials have been published in The Australian)
The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.The President’s ‘breakout moments’ were small beer
29 Nov 2021
The President’s ‘breakout moments’ were small beer
29 Nov 2021
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has said that he totally banned the import of ethanol and substituted local produce, as a result of which the sugar cane cultivator is now in business. He has also said that he banned saffron imports and successfully substituted the locally cultivated variety. The same was done with pepper, he has said.
He was reciting some of the achievements of his Government in a recent speech. No doubt these were steps in the right direction – and nobody would have previously thought of these import substitutions that generated jobs, and spurred local production.
If these were the signal achievements of this Government, how was it that there was very little ground-level appreciation of his efforts? We hardly hear anyone say what a stupendous achievement Gotabaya Sir made possible with ethanol, or what a master stroke that was with saffron – never mind black pepper.
Why are the most touted achievements of the President apparently under a bushel? Are our people rank ingrates? Don’t they know that a revolution is turning on ethanol, even as he speaks?
Instead of raucous celebrations on ethanol or cheers about a “saffron revolution”, what the people have been vocalising is a litany about difficulties, shortages, and a forex crisis.
What gives? Why are this Government’s signal achievements going unsung?
It’s because, though the President may have his heart in the right place, there is no transformative change in the economy just because a few commodities have been produced at home.
In other words, the President has eminently got the small beer flawlessly right, but in the big picture, we are veering on near-disaster.
There are some countries that are having a bigger breakout moment growing poppy furtively; there is marijuana tourism in the Seychelles, making a bigger buck than we made on tourism since we embarked on that industry. No, this writer is not advocating marijuana hedonism (or tourism for that matter) in this Buddhist country, even though the maverick MP Diana Gamage suggested something to that effect in Parliament recently.
She made statements alluding to the fact that Sri Lanka is blessed with cannabis and its time to grow extensively, so that there can be a lucrative cannabis export industry. She said it wasn’t a drug and was all medicinal, and she had enough cannabis products at home, which she’s afraid to bring into Parliament.
This writer is not advocating a revival based on cannabis, but the lesson is that we need a production economy, and Diana in her maverick fashion teaches us that lesson. The country has been made into a small-time import substitution experiment, but that has got us nowhere near the promised breakout moment.
There is a distinct inability to think big and believe big, which is why the refrain is that “the President has had oodles of bad luck”. It’s what I hear from the proverbial man and woman on the street. The President, they say, is plagued by ill-luck, and that’s written in his star.
That may be why there is so much of looking up to Gnanakka, but that’s a different story. The story of ill-luck has a distinct genesis.
Covid is not necessarily ill-luck. Vietnam’s breakout moment was Covid, and the country had the best emerging economy of 2021, would you believe it? It was by far Asia’s top-performing economy during the Covid pandemic.
The genesis of the story that the President is plagued by ill-luck is that it’s all in the mind, and whether our powers that be have Gnanakka in mind to do something about that or not, what’s psychological is psychological. It’s not to suggest that handling the economy in the global period of Covid-related slump was a walk in the park.
But ill-luck is a perception. Stories are legion of countries that performed better than normal during the pandemic, and Vietnam is just one of them.
Small beer is small beer – and simple piecemeal import substitution is not revolutionary, period. It may be true that there were previous governments that didn’t think of any strategy to produce locally, in the large scale or small. To that extent, the ethanol and pepper experiments, etc. have worked. But that’s not a transformation, especially in the time of a pandemic when the economy is hit before we are out of the gate, due to the tourism slump, etc.
At the very least, small economies that aspire to breakout should be nimble enough to take the hits. This is explained in the book Open and Nimble: Finding Stable Growth in Small Economies (Leaderman and Lesniak). “Small economies tend to compensate for their export concentration by being nimble in the sense of being able to change their production and export structure relatively quickly over time.” That’s a direct quote.
We can’t think big, if, particularly during times of crisis, “small beer” is the only solution that comes to mind (i.e. ethanol substitution.) When Mahinda Rajapaksa was President, it’s known that he didn’t like the initial tourist board slogan of that time – “Sri Lanka, Small Miracle”.
It was changed to “Land Like No Other”. But it’s not merely the slogan that needs to be big. The slogan may even connote small or even tiny, but it’s the ideas that need to be big.
Ethanol substitution cannot be crowed about when the economy as a whole was essentially cramped by needless lockdowns, etc.
The office of the presidency in the main could not handle the optics. It was thought that the mere “optics” of not closing down would be devastating.
Vietnam didn’t think that way. There were never any nationwide lockdowns, but there were some of them in the so-called epicentres in that country. All the while “open and nimble” economic innovation took place, and Vietnam became the focus for industry that was displaced from China.
Just last week, President Rajapaksa congratulated the exporters for almost reaching pre-pandemic levels of export, as he said. But has that helped the forex situation or with regard to all other negative perceptions?
Hardly. Is that ill-luck, too? No, it’s because the economy has been hamstrung by “small thinking” and snuck away in a corner. The President is eternally in complaint mode, saying we were beset by the Covid ravages. It doesn’t help complaining when he has brought half the ravages upon himself and the economy by being so obsessed with the “optics”.
Import substitution has to be done with export in mind, in particular. Then again, even when there is minimal import substitution, it’s the export sector that matters.
Open and nimble is not about import substitution. It is about opening up breakout export opportunities and thinking big. There is no place in that equation for complaining how badly we were hit by Covid.
Yes, we were badly hit by Covid – who wasn’t? Vietnam was, too. We also had negatives such as a relative lack of foreign reserves and a debt crisis unlike, say Thailand, which in 2021 is classed above China as an emerging market. Our disadvantages, however, were all the more reason we had to be rational about Covid optics, and had to be 10 times more innovative than Thailand.
That didn’t happen, and there were no breakout moments, but there were enough dismal moments and melancholy days.
In some ways, the “small beer speech”, as it shall be anointed, about ethanol is emblematic. Gotabaya Rajapaksa bit off more than he could chew when he offered to transform the country as President. Yes, he nor anyone anticipated Covid, but if he was true leadership material, he would have had the presence of mind to move beyond ethanol and complaining eternally about Covid. Churchill didn’t say “nobody expected this bloody war”.
He said “we shall fight on the beaches”, and when someone said Britain’s neck would be wrung like that of a chicken, he said “some chicken, some neck”.
Leadership takes a little more than a semi-confessional speech. In fact, it takes a lot more than that.
(The writer is a former Editor-in-Chief of three national English language publications and a practising Attorney-at-Law. He is an Editors’ Guild award-winning columnist, and contributing writer and columnist for Nikkei Asian Review and South China Morning Post, while his editorials have been published in The Australian)
The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.Kapruka
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Discover Kapruka, the leading online shopping platform in Sri Lanka, where you can conveniently send Gifts and Flowers to your loved ones for any event. Explore a wide range of popular Shopping Categories on Kapruka, including Toys, Groceries, Electronics, Birthday Cakes, Fruits, Chocolates, Automobile, Mother and Baby Products, Clothing, and Fashion. Additionally, Kapruka offers unique online services like Money Remittance, Astrology, Medicine Delivery, and access to over 700 Top Brands. Also If you’re interested in selling with Kapruka, Partner Central by Kapruka is the best solution to start with. Moreover, through Kapruka Global Shop, you can also enjoy the convenience of purchasing products from renowned platforms like Amazon and eBay and have them delivered to Sri Lanka.Send love straight to their heart this Valentine's with our thoughtful gifts!