Sri Lanka Has Stability. But Does It Have A Future?
A fair-use commentary by Lehan Edirisinghe / AngryPages, responding to Harsha Gunasena’s Colombo Telegraph article, “Confused Macroeconomic Policies Of The Government.”
Harsha Gunasena’s article is useful because it separates two things Sri Lanka keeps mixing together: punishment politics and economic repair.
I understand why people want punishment. Sri Lanka was not simply “mismanaged” in some clean academic sense. It was abused, looted, lied to, over-borrowed, over-promised, and then handed a bill ordinary people had to pay. So yes, corruption matters. Justice matters. Political accountability matters.
But corruption cannot be the whole diagnosis. If the country says “corruption caused everything,” then the solution becomes theatre: arrest a few enemies, hold a few press conferences, call it national recovery. That is not enough.
The crisis was built over many years: deficit budgets, weak exports, state-owned losses, energy subsidies, expensive borrowing, bad tax policy, money printing, exchange-rate manipulation, the fertilizer disaster, delayed IMF engagement, and a political culture that preferred slogans to arithmetic. That is the harder truth. It is less emotionally satisfying than blaming one camp, but it is more useful.
The government deserves some credit for not gambling with the IMF programme. After 2022, no serious government had unlimited room for drama. Sri Lanka needed stability first. The IMF itself says recent reforms have supported recovery, with 2025 growth, reserve accumulation, and revenue performance exceeding expectations; but it also stresses the need for continued reform, resilience, and inclusive growth. (IMF)
That is the central point: IMF compliance is not a national development strategy. It is a floor, not a future.