REFUGEE

Sri Lanka's recovery from a decades-long civil war has been marred by graft, violence and a culture of lawlessness, a corruption watchdog said Tuesday.
Transparency International rapped the government -- which crushed the Tamil Tiger separatist rebels in May -- for a lack of democracy, accountability and transparency.
"The latter half of 2009 marks a period of hope and potential for Sri Lanka. Yet, winning the war seems to have been easier than winning the peace," said a report by the Berlin-based group's Sri Lankan branch.
"Nowhere is this more clear than in the case of the government's record on human rights and media freedom."
The report said the authorities had cracked down on dissent in the final stages of the war, with journalists, diplomats and aid workers reprimanded or deported for making critical comments.
Transparency International said 34 journalists and media workers had been killed between 2004 and 2009, including prominent newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunga.
"Media freedom has suffered immensely during the past year," the report said, citing incidents of journalists and media workers being abducted and beaten up to divulge sources or to stop them writing about the war.
With some media offices torched and staff threatened by unknown gangs, many publications censored themselves on war coverage, the organisation noted.
"The government's apparent lack of respect for media freedom and the public's right to know has had a direct bearing on the quality of democratic political governance," it said.
"Sri Lanka is at a crossroads," it added, urging the government to replace "military logic with public legitimacy" to improve relations between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil communities.

Sri Lanka today said all displaced Tamil civilians, currently lodged in relief camps, will be resettled by January 10 next year and efforts for a political solution to the Tamil question will be initiated immediately after the presidential elections thereA Sri Lankan delegation consisting of Senior Presidential Adviser Basil Rajapaksa, President's Secretary Lalit Weeratunga and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa met Minister of External Affairs S M Krishna to discuss issues related to the resettlement of Tamil civilians. "The discussion was very good. It was a very cordial meeting," Basil told reporters here.

He said the Tamil civilians living in the camps in northern Sri Lanka have all the democratic rights. "They are going to vote," was his refrain when asked whether they will be given constitutional rights before the polls.

Asked about the political solution to the Tamil question, Basil said, "We have very firm understanding. We assure we will see the task (of political solution) immediately after the presidential elections... All constitutional amendments needed for the political solution will be made."

The Sri Lankan leader also said that "Sri Lanka will stand with India" in all the interests of Indian government and its security concerns. At the same time he maintained that the Indian government did not raise the issue of any of its security concerns in the meeting.

Sri Lanka says 94,000 civilians remain in the main transit camp in the north as the government tries to meet a January deadline to settle all displaced people held since the defeat of Tamil Tiger rebels in May.

The refugees, held at the Menik Farm center near Vavuniya, were visited yesterday by Robert Blake, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia and a former ambassador to Colombo, the Defense Ministry said on its Web site.

More than 15,000 people are returning to their home towns and villages each week, according to the government. Each family is given about $400 dollars and provided with roofing sheets, building and cooking materials, as well as clothes and food for a week, it said.

The U.S. and United Nations have criticized Sri Lanka for delaying the settlement program, saying prolonged detention of displaced people will fuel resentment among Tamils. President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government says their return was delayed by the need to clear about 1.5 million mines from conflict areas and secure the north to prevent a return of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

More than 280,000 people were housed in camps in May when the army defeated the last forces of the LTTE, ending its 26- year fight for a separate Tamil homeland in the north and east of the South Asian island nation.

All displaced people from the Jaffna region in the north have returned to the area where mines have been cleared, Northern Province Governor Major General G.A. Chandrasiri said, according to the Defense Ministry.

Agriculture Industry

The government is helping families engaged in the agriculture industry in the north and has set a target to cultivate 10,500 acres (4,250 hectares) of rice fields this season, the governor said. The main growing area around Mannar in the northwest has been cleared of mines, the government said last month.

The so-called Mannar rice bowl produced a record harvest in 1991 before falling to 23rd out of 27 growing areas listed by the government before the region was captured from the Tamil Tigers in June 2008.

While Sri Lanka in July received a $2.6 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, the end of the civil war has boosted agriculture and tourism that will help the country’s $41 billion economy. The central bank forecasts it will grow as much as 6 percent next year after expanding about 3.5 percent in 2009.

Investment, Exports

Overseas investment in Sri Lanka rose about 10 percent in 2009 from about $3 billion last year, Central Bank Governor Nivard Cabraal said last month. The country’s exports that include tea, rubber, textiles and clothes may start to grow in the first quarter of 2010 after dropping for 10 consecutive months, he said.

The end to the war that killed about 90,000 people has helped push the benchmark Colombo All-share index up almost 90 percent this year.

Rajapaksa last month called a presidential election two years before his mandate expires as he seeks to capitalize on his government ending the civil war. He will face General Sarath Fonseka, who commanded the army when it defeated the Tamil Tigers, in the ballot.

The government and opposition must allow balanced coverage of the election, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders group said in an e-mailed statement today.

“These elections are crucial for the country’s future, but they will not be considered democratic if there is no press freedom,” the group said.

Free Press

Sri Lanka must ensure a fair and free press, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee said in a Dec. 7 report on relations between the countries.

“Though the war is over, a culture of fear and paranoia permeates society, especially for journalists, which further erodes Sri Lanka’s standing in the international community and hampers its prospects for genuine peace,” it said.

The committee said the U.S. risks losing Sri Lanka as an ally unless it focuses on helping the country’s security and economic development instead of concentrating on the political environment.

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka is back on the global investment radar after government forces in May ended a nearly four-decade separatist war with Tamil guerrillas, fund managers and analysts say.
Sri Lanka's small stock exchange has become one of the world's top performing bourses, climbing over 96 percent this year as it reaps a peace dividend from the ending of the island's bloody ethnic conflict.
"With the war coming to a close, there is a lot of interest in Sri Lanka. It is like the hottest place to invest your money," said Mark Mobius, executive chairman of global mutual fund giant Templeton Asset Management Ltd.
Investors are banking on renewed economic strength and profits in the country now that the protracted civil war which claimed up to 100,000 lives is over.
"Sri Lanka clearly interests investors on the macroeconomic level now with interest rates and inflation coming down," said Channa Amaratunga, an analyst at Colombo-based CT Capital Private Ltd.
"The end of the war has opened up endless investment opportunities across real estate, healthcare, plantations, infrastructure," said Amaratunga.
Mobius told AFP the Sri Lankan government still needed to relax strict controls on the economy to attract more global funds and that liquidity in the stock market remained poor, making it tough to trade shares.
"Sri Lanka needs to loosen up a bit in order to attract private capital into infrastructure, specialised manufacturing and property development," Mobius said on a recent visit to the tropical island nation.
"The government doesn't want to privatise or list state entities. Private firms are mostly family-run and they're not keen to loosen control," he said.
Templeton exited Sri Lanka's stock market during the civil war, in which Tamil Tiger rebels fought to carve out a separate nation in the Sinhalese-dominated country.
During his recent visit, Mobius said he had met private firms with interests in such areas as tea and garment exports to discuss making private equity investments through Templeton's Strategic and Frontier Markets fund.
The fund has already invested about 850 million dollars in government bonds.
"There is a lot of appetite out there for Sri Lanka right now, be it debt or private equity," said Douglas Clayton, chief executive of Hong Kong-based Leopard Capital, which aims to raise 100 million dollars to invest in Sri Lanka.
Clayton said Leopard's private equity fund would promote management buyouts of local firms and try to put between 10 and 20 percent of its resources into power, plantations, retailing, information technology and tourism.
"The next decade could be a renaissance for Sri Lanka," said Clayton, adding that Leopard was also launching a smaller fund to invest in firms listed on the Colombo bourse.
Sri Lanka's central bank recently raised its economic growth forecast for 2009 to 4.5 percent from an earlier estimate of 2.5 percent. For next year, it is hoping for expansion of six percent.
Singapore-based investment company Calamander Group Pte, said it was currently raising up to 75 million dollars to invest in private firms involved in tea, rubber, timber, coconut, banking and ceramics.
London-based Aureos Capital Ltd has been investing in Sri Lankan firms that have expanded into the Asian region since 2003. "Our pipeline of projects looks more robust than before the war," said Nissanka Weerasekera, an investment manager for Aureos.
Chaminda Ranasinghe, who helps run a local IT electronic payment processing solutions provider called Interblocks, says companies are hunting for funds to pay for expansion.
Kumar Jayasuriya, the Sri Lankan chairman of British-based tea group Finlays, said: "There's a paucity of funds to upgrade and grow businesses locally. Private capital can play an important role."

colombo- Even before resettling the Tamils in their traditional areas, the Sri Lankan government is in the process of acquiring lands in the northern and eastern regions of the country to attract foreign investors.
Speaking on ‘Trade and investment opportunities in Sri Lanka’, Sri Lankan Deputy High Commissioner Vadivelu Krishnamoorthy said that vast areas of suitable land had been identified for cultivation of food crops and foreign investors with a capacity to introduce high-yielding advanced agricultural techniques are being given priority. He said that with the eradication of terrorism most areas in the north and east of the country have been opened for tourists and invited Indian investors to build tourism-related infrastructure such as theme parks.
Nilaveli in Trincomalle district and Pasikudah, Vakarai and Arugambay in Batticaloa district had been identified as potential areas for investment in tourism.
The Sri Lankan government had also put in place single window clearance system for foreign investors and streamlined the process so that the investors would get clearances in a short span of time.