At the economic helm

As the United National Front government undertook to rebuild a civil war shattered Sri Lanka after the seven-year rule of the People’s Alliance party, the incoming Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe chose President’s Counsel Kairshasp Choksy as his finance minister. Choksy, the country’s first "full-time finance minister after 14 years,” inherits an economy "torn at its seams. The losses are astronomical. The deficits are gargantuan,” Ravi Laddu­wahetty describes Sri Lanka’s financial landscape in a prelude to his interview with Choksy published in Daily News (January 28, 2002).

In the published interview Choksy himself de­scribes the economy as "in a state of paralysis. Eco­nomic growth, for the first time in our history, is below zero. Inflation is running at around 15 percent. The budget deficit last year was as much as 11 percent of GDP (gross domestic product). Recurrent expenditure has exceeded revenue. The outstanding public debt is Rs 1,414 billion. This means that taken as an average over Sri Lanka’s population, every citizen of Sri Lanka carries a debt of Rs 76,000.”

It will require an iron will for Choksy to push through his program of reducing current expenditure while maintaining capital investment, simplifying the tax structure, deregulating business transactions, pushing Rs 25 billion worth of stagnant projects through to productivity and effectively utilizing the US $ 700 million annual allocation in foreign aid that, he says, has remained unutilized since many years. At a time when government revenue is facing a projected decline of Rs 30 billion, it will maintain the addi­tional payment of Rs 1,250 million in salary increases to public servants and Rs 750 million in additional pension costs which the outgoing People’s Alliance had promised to the electorate, as per the interview arti­cle.

Choksy’s task could hardly be envied by any econo­mist in the world. That Wickremesinghe has handed it to Choksy could be because of the latter’s proven talent for finding his way through political landmines: he had steered President Ranasinghe Premadasa to victory in the Sri Lanka Supreme Court in 1988, routing Sirimavo Bhandaranaike, the former Prime Minister, who had chal­lenged Premadasa’s election on the grounds of intimida­tion et al. The hearings which spanned 525 working days, examined 910 witnesses and covered 26,000 pages in recorded proceedings entered The Guinness Book of World Records as the longest trial in history.

Refusing to be pinned down to a "fixed timetable,” Choksy was banking on "the ongoing ceasefire (with insurgent LTTE to) help reduce military expenses.” He hoped to revive the private sector in the course of his government’s peace talks with the LTTE and also "contain inflation... through the increase of foreign direct investment (FDI),” greater deregulation and trade.

To establish the transparency and accountability that the business community is seeking in a land where "corruption and kickbacks were rampant” for 25 years, as noted Ladduwahetty, Choksy said that all large tenders would need the approval of the finance minis­try. Choksy expected to maintain apparel exports and revive tourism in view of the prevailing ceasefire; to promote small and medium scale industries in the rural areas to create employment opportunities; to improve management in the public sector by chairing a committee that will "frequently review and coordinate the pro­gress of each project to ensure efficient and timely implementation.” By these and other concomitant meas­ures like curtailing the budget deficit, Choksy hopes to rev up the currently projected -0.6 percent growth rate of the economy to a positive five percent.

Choksy is a respected constitutional and commer­cial lawyer. A trustee and the most high profile of the 60 odd Parsis who now constitute the Ceylon Parsi Anjuman Trust, Choksy had had a berth in an earlier United National Party government. In a chat with Par­siana in 1998 he had ascribed the reduced numbers of the community from an earlier estimate of 350 to the change in citizenship laws that mandated that a person and his/her father had to be Sri Lanka born to qualify for citizenship. Half the community had then chosen to return to India. When the study of Sinhalese became compulsory, it triggered a migration to Australia, Choksy had told Parsiana (see "The Zoroastrians of Seren­dip,” Par­siana, January 1999).

Choksy, his wife Freny and their three sons, chose to remain. While Jamsheed pursues his academic career in the US as associate professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University, Vishtasp is a lawyer and Kharsheed, a research manager with the US Agency for International Development in Colombo.