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The Finance Ministry yesterday said the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) agreement would be presented in Parliament after it was signed and once the entire process had been conducted with the
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Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera |
oversight of the Attorney General’s Department.
In a statement, the Finance Ministry said: “The Compact Agreement and the Program Implementation Agreement will be submitted to and enacted by the Parliament of Sri Lanka once it is signed and before its entry into force and will be published in the Government Gazette before being submitted to Parliament.”
The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is a bilateral United States Foreign Aid Agency established by the United States Congress in 2004, applying a new philosophy towards foreign aid.
It provides time-limited grants and assistance to developing countries that meet rigorous standards of good governance such as effectively fighting corruption and respecting democratic rights, it added.
On the Government’s request, the MCC undertook a ‘Constraints to Economic Growth Analysis’ in 2016. The MCC and the Government subsequently decided to focus on the land and transport sectors, which were identified as binding constraints to growth.
The constraints analysis concluded that traffic congestion in the Colombo Metropolitan Region, poor transport connectivity between provinces and weaknesses in land administration constrain economic growth. Accordingly, the MCC agreed to grant $ 480 million to finance the above projects.
Final negotiations on the compact were conducted in October 2018 between the MCC and a Cabinet-approved Government delegation, which consisted of officials from the relevant ministries and Government agencies responsible for implementing the selected projects, including a representative from the Attorney General’s Department.
“The whole process and the final agreements were done under the guidance of the Attorney General and well within the legal framework. The Attorney General is of the opinion that the agreements are in order and there exists no legal impediment to execute same,” the statement said.
A Cabinet Memorandum, along with the final drafts of the agreements, was submitted on 31 May 2019 to the Cabinet. The Cabinet appointed a committee for further detailed discussions on the matter. Subsequently, the Ministry of Finance submitted the Cabinet Memorandum dated 5 July 2019 seeking Cabinet approval to sign the Compact Agreement and the Program Implementation Agreement. The Cabinet granted approval for the signing of the agreements on 29 October 2019.
