New Govt. committed to genuine stakeholder engagement, effective policy planning

Thursday, 29 January 2015 01:40 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By Channa Fernandopulle Deputy Minister for Policy Planning and Economic Development Dr. Harsha De Silva reiterated his Government’s commitment to genuine engagement and open discussion with the private sector, academia and research institutes as an essential prerequisite to the formulation of a successful national economic policy.

“It is important that Government officials are not constrained to their offices but actually move around and interact with the private sector so that our thinking is known to you and vice-versa. The thinking of the Prime Minister, which I share, is that we must engage with our stakeholders. This means that public sector will not necessarily be the only body that decides on the direction this country will take,” he asserted. Dr De. Silva noted that they were going to move away from authoritarian policy planning processes towards a real engagement with the private sector, academia and research institutes. “That culture of open debate has been absent from policy planning in Government and we want to reintroduce it. We will encourage informal discussions that can later move to more formal structures; into board rooms, computer simulations and so on.” “As a matter of fact, if it is possible after the longer term elections are carried out, I will host wine and cheese evenings at our office, or we could alternate with halapa and plain tea, so long as we can engage, chat, discuss, debate and even scream at each other,” he quipped. Dr. De Silva made the comments during a keynote address at yesterday’s HRM Awards 2014 Learning Conference. He further stated that objective analysis of economic data coming out of the Department of Census and Statistics, in addition to continuous, independent evaluation of economic policy, would also play a crucial role in ensuring economic stability for the nation going forward. “What is most important is to make sure that the dividends of development flows to the household and the only way we can ensure that it happens across the country in the cities and the villages is if we have accurate data that we can analyse in an objective manner to ascertain if policies are working and tweak policy in order to meet our ultimate goal,” Dr. De Silva stated. In that context, he welcomed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s decision to include the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) under the purview of the Ministry of Policy Planning and Economic Development, as a proactive measure towards effective critical evaluation of policy measures. Among other key points raised by during his address was the necessity of improving Sri Lanka’s human capital by way of investments into healthcare, education and training. “People cannot be separated from their health, values and knowledge in the way that they can be separated from their physical and financial assets. That is why we believe that expenditure on education, training and healthcare are investments in human capital. As the people in charge of planning, budgeting and financing Government operations we have to ask ourselves, do I build an airport in the middle of nowhere? Or do I put that money into technical training schools? “In this manner we hope to bring together all stakeholders and think together to ensure that we as a nation correctly prioritise and allocate our resources and I invite all of you to engage with us. We will formally introduce the structures within which we hope to engage with organisations like yours. What you want and what I want is the same thing and that is to build a country where we as Sri Lankans immaterial of our race or religion can call ourselves proud citizens of this beautiful country and take it to where it belongs,” Dr. De Silva concluded. – Pix by Lasantha Kumara

Govt. working to reassign graduates hired by previous regime

The fate of 15,600 graduates hired as Economic Development Officers by the previous regime is yet to be decided, according to Deputy Minister for Policy Planning and Economic Development Dr. Harsha De Silva. “I was inundated with calls from around the country yesterday. Basil Rajapaksa ran a ministry called the Ministry of Economic Development under the previous regime and in the process he hired a lot of people including 15,600 graduates. “Now suddenly the Ministry of Economic Development does not exist. We shut it down because it served no purpose; it was only there as an additional burden on the Treasury and a waste of resources. So the question is what will happen to them? Certainly we are not going to ask them to go home, and we will have involve them in more productive activities but this is just one problem we have to deal with,” Dr. De Silva stated. He further noted that salary increases targeting the public sector would also include these economic development officers. However, Dr. De Silva criticised the practice of politically-motivated appointments to the public sector. “People were given jobs as political appointments so that jobs could be said to have been created and so these graduates were employed but with no specific purpose. In pure economics you simply do not hire people and give them wages if the marginal product of that unit of labour is less than the wage that you pay them. “Here it is not a marginal product but actually a negative so the question then is, what are we going to do with all these resources? Perhaps in a month’s time I might have an answer for you on this question, but we will figure out a way,” he stated.