Kerala FM tells India to learn from Sri Lanka’s mistakes

Kerala Finance Minister K N Balagopal has urged the Indian Government to learn from Sri Lanka’s mistakes.

He said that the economic crisis in Sri Lanka is a result of its aggressive globalisation policy and it is a lesson for India which is also following the similar policy,

The Economic Times quoted Balagopal as saying the Indian central Government must take measures to fix the problems in the Indian economy.

He said the Centre was moving into a ?danger zone? as more than half of the total Union budget comes from borrowing and not much investments are being made in productive sectors.

Blaming the blind following of globalisation policy for the crisis in Sri Lanka, Balagopal said the governments there focused fully on the foreign income generating sectors like tourism and ignored the primary sectors like agriculture resulting the heavy fall of economy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

?People are fleeing the island nation not because of war or internal conflict but due to abject poverty. The governments there completely ignored the sectors like food production and gave their full attention in generating foreign money through the sectors like tourism. But the COVID-19 pandemic caused the collapse of the tourism sector pushing the country into a severe crisis,? said the Minister.

He said while the state is borrowing only 3.4 per cent from its permissible limit of four per cent, the centre?s borrowing is 6.9 per cent, which is not a good sign.

?This is an indication that the Centre is moving to the danger zone. In this context, we should analyse the Sri Lankan crisis. The Government of India borrows more than half of its total budget. It is not collecting the tax properly. The centre is also not investing more money in the production sectors,? Balagopal claimed.

He dismissed allegations that Kerala will also face similar crisis if it goes ahead with the multi-crore SilverLine semi-high speed railway project by borrowing huge money from international money lenders, saying the southern state?s economy is intact and it has never crossed its permissible borrowing limits. (Colombo Gazette)