First - rates themselves. You'll hear a lot of different types of rates, but rates move together mostly - so can think of 1 rate. Essentially, it's the rate at which you'll get money from a bank if you save or the rate at which you'll have to pay loan interest back.
(2/15)
So interest rates were kept low for a while now, and we started moving up late last year. Low rates leads to easy loans for people and companies, more money in the economy, and more consumption.
Quick key extracts from recent (post-Covid) IMF reports regarding social welfare. This should give a sense how the IMF views social welfare NOW and why we have space (and the urgent need) to expand welfare to deal with the #SriLankaEconomicCrisis and key #IMFNow reform
(1/7)
Zambia 2021
"Key elements of the authorities’ reform agenda aim to re-establish fiscal sustainability...towards GREATER INVESTMENT IN HEALTH AND EDUCATION AND THE DELIVERY OF MORE SOCIAL BENEFITS"
(2/7)
Lebanon 2022
"Lebanon’s economic program would need...TO INVEST IN CRITICALLY-NEEDED SOCIAL SPENDING TO SUPPORT THE PEOPLE OF LEBANON"
I'm going to be advocating for and explaining some contentious economic points in the days to come re #SriLankaEconomicCrisis and #IMFNow so to be open and clear, this is about what I'm trying to achieve, why I'm trying to achieve it, and what my principles here are.
(1/25)
What I'm trying to achieve here is simple.
Get as many people as possible aware of what's happening economically and what's needed to recover, and help as many people as possible, understand a pretty gatekept and unintuitive field: economics.
(2/25)
I'll be focusing on the crisis at hand to do this, and providing explanations, stories, narratives in order to improve this knowledge and understanding.
Because econ IS a complicated topic (and twitter has limits), these explanations are all oversimplifications
Let's set out our characters. Rehan represents all rich people in Sri Lanka. Pasan represents all poor people in Sri Lanka. CEB, CPC, banks, and Central Government remain players.
Let's see how Pasan gets screwed over by the rest.
(2/20)
In 2021, at different points, CPC made Rs. 10-50 losses per litre of fuel. Every single litre. So that's a massive loss.
Along with other losses, comes to around 83 billion rupees of a loss in 2021