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Sri Lanka’s central bank to issue securities to mop up liquidity
news,
March 14, 2008.
COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s central bank is to issue its own securities for the first time since 2003 because it has almost run out of treasury bills and needs paper to sell to the money market in order to mop up excess liquidity.
“The central bank is prepared to continue the absorption of liquidity by issuing its own securities under its open market operations,” it said in a statement on Thursday. Liquidity has increased because the central bank has been buying dollars in the market to keep the rupee steady in order to support exporters. The central bank said it had bought $360.6 million from the market so far this year.
“If the central bank continues to purchase more and more dollars, we will be releasing rupees. We need to absorb those rupees from the market,” D S Wijesinghe, an assistant governor at the central bank, told Reuters.
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Published: Thu Mar 13 21:46:05 EDT 2008
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SRI LANKA: Elections Planned in Ex-Tamil Tiger Country
IPS,
March 14, 2008.
BATTICALOA, Mar 13 (IPS) - Having secured local body polls in alliance with the armed Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), Sri Lanka’s ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) now plans to hold provincial elections in this eastern district, seized by the army from the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) 10 months ago.
Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama told newspersons in Colombo on Wednesday that the plan to hold provincial elections was part of a road map to solve the ethnic conflict on the island, as promised when the government unilaterally abrogated its 1992 ceasefire agreement with the LTTE in January.
The TMVP’s landslide victory was expected after the main opposition United National Party (UNP) and the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) boycotted the local polls held on Monday, on the grounds that situation was not conducive for free and fair elections. Both the UNP and the TNA are now opposed to the government’s plan to hold provincial elections in the district.
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Published: Thu Mar 13 21:57:17 EDT 2008
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India meddling in Sri Lanka affairs, says JVP
IANS,
March 14, 2008.
New Delhi, March 14 (IANS) A leader of Sri Lanka’s third largest political party asserts that India is again interfering in the country’s affairs by forcing Colombo to devolve powers to minorities. Vijitha Herath of the Sinhala-Marxist Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) also said in an interview here that India’s backing for a power sharing formula amounted to giving ideological backing to the Tamil Tigers.
“Indian ideas on devolution are indirect support to the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) ideology,” Herath told IANS shortly before returning home.
Herath, who is also secretary of the JVP’s international affairs department, came to India to attend a meeting of the All India Forward Bloc at Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh.
He praised his country’s military for waging war against the LTTE. He was furious over what he said were appeals by India and the West to ask Sri Lanka again and again to go for a political solution to the ethnic conflict that has left some 70,000 people dead since 1983.
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Published: Thu Mar 13 23:47:09 EDT 2008
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