The Open University of Sri Lanka invited me to deliver the sixth in a series of distinguished lectures on the 10th of April 2015. Looking through the titles of the previous lectures, I saw that the common theme is the university and higher learning. Therefore, I proposed “Making the university relevant” as the topic and described the content as follows: In an increasingly complex world where difficult decisions have to be made by those in government, there is demand for evidence to support political and policy choices. The university is the default source where one looks for evidence or for those who can generate evidence. But on most occasions, scholars and policy makers do not connect.
Not bad for a young industry. But I do hope the results of the survey will be disclosed quickly and with breakdowns of export and domestic earnings and employment. Last time it had to be extracted in dribs and drabs. “Sri Lanka has launched an ICT value survey to find the national hi-tech exports it achieved in 2013/14.” the minister said in a statement.
India used to be the center of gravity of everything we did at LIRNEasia. In terms of expenditure and effort, perhaps the center is shifting. But intellectually, the challenge of managing the asymmetrical relationship between Sri Lanka and India continues to engage. I was asked to write something for the visit of Prime Minister Modi. Unbeknownst, the piece had also been published in the government-owned newspaper: One subject that is likely to come up in the Modi-Sirisena discussion is the long delayed coal power station.
A Ratings Agency has put specific numbers behind the entity-based and mobiles-sector specific taxes in 2015 interim budget. Should the proposals go ahead, 2015 FFO-adjusted net leverage for Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT, BB-/Stable) and Dialog Axiata (Dialog, AAA(lka)/Stable) is likely to deteriorate to 1.8x and 2.5x, respectively (2014: 1.2x and 1.
Haven’t had time to analyze this election promise, so was very happy to see a CPRsouth alumnus take an excellent run at it. Usually, these free Wi-Fi services have lower speeds compared to the average home connection, and often come with a data or a time cap. Perth, for example, offers free public Wi-Fi in a certain area, with a limit of 50MB per connection. Do your stuff, and then get out of the way; let the next user in. Effective, intelligent limiting is one solution.
Yesterday, I was the only non-politician on a political debate show on TV known as “Satana” (battle). The topic was the new President’s/government’s 100 Day Program (of which more than one-third has passed). I was not expecting to talk about the taxes imposed on the mobile industry, but right in the middle, one of the “referees” asked me about one of the three (or two, depending on the company size) taxes imposed on the mobile operators. I briefly answered saying it was not a good idea since its retroactive and mobile-specific nature was likely to have the effect of depressing investment that was needed if Sri Lanka is to move to the next stage of connectivity beyond voice. I had taken this position without any serious pushback in other media since shortly after the interim budget was announced.
A 24/7 news channel interviewed me about the mobile-only taxes proposed by the new government. It is not online (yet) so I cannot give a link. The last question I was asked by the interviewer was about my recommendations to the government. Here is what I said: 1. The proposal that the mobile operators should pay the 25 percent tax on voice calls currently paid by mobile users should be withdrawn.
This is a problem that comes up in countries that LIRNEasia works in. In Bangladesh and India, where the government-owned telcos were not privatized, they are on life support. Based possibly on comments made by entities such as LIRNEasia, the government of Myanmar has chosen to effectively hand over the management of its government-owned telco to KDDI. Here is a discussion of the problem in general terms, discussed in the Sri Lankan media in the context of the good governance debate that is running through the country in the aftermath of the recent Presidential election: Is the Government willing to list a majority of the commercial organisations it owns in the stock market? Is it willing to allow the Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) to divest or acquire shares in the market as needed?
The Lankadeepa, the leading Sinhala newspaper in Sri Lanka, has reported a speech by Dr Ranga Kalansooriya at a recent event on media ethics organized by the Sri Lanka Press Institute, where he claims that a survey covering 14 out of the 25 districts showed very high levels of reliance on the Internet for political news. Of those who had changed their views on who to vote for President, 59 per cent had done so based on TV; while 31 percent did so because of Internet content. Only one percent of those changing their stance had done so because of print media Somewhat ironically, the SLPI has not posted any information related to the event on its website. Hopefully, more information about this survey will be forthcoming.
We have been requested via social media to shed light on MNP, I gather in light of various dissatisfactions about what all ISPs did in terms of blocking websites in the past few years. Attachment to the number, the costs involved in printing up new business cards, etc were seen by many in the West as a barrier to customers changing from one operator to another. There are instances when we have unequivocally recommended MNP. But as a general rule, one has to weigh the pros and cons. This slideset is the most comprehensive I could find, though it was worked up for small economies where the economic case for MNP is much harder.
Five years ago, our Lead Consultant Economist, Dr Harsha de Silva, entered Parliament as an opposition national-list MP. For those unfamiliar with idiosyncrasies of Sri Lankan politics, that is an MP without constituency responsibilities who is appointed by a political party based on the contribution he/she may make to legislative or executive functions. Without doubt, Harsha was one of the best national-list MPs in the 14th Parliament. In the early years, he continued to engage in research-related activities sometimes on behalf of LIRNEasia and sometimes on his own. Few years back, his party made him a constituency organizer which left him little time for research.
Parvez Iftikhar will be amused that I am proposing a fund, after objecting to his favorite Universal Service Fund. But that is how the policy game gets played. We look at something that does not work at all or produces more bad outcomes than good (government-owned telcos with universal service obligations in the old days; government-owned media organizations now) and propose a solution that will reduce the harm (universal service fund for telecom; public media content fund for media). Then we see how the solution works and propose sunsetting it or shutting it down if it has been hijacked by nefarious interests. Deng Xiao Ping called this crossing the river by feeling the stones.
It was not all sunshine and fare weather that greeted us on the December 26th this year in Sri Lanka. Instead a country in a crisis dealing with the continuous week long rains washing away sides of hills and flooding (copy of Dec 26th landslide and flood warnings issued by DMC). While we were at the Hambantota exhibition, there was uncertainty in being cut-off from Colombo with flash floods crossing roads in various E/A/B network. Had the rains continued on the 26th we may have been stranded or had great difficulty returning to Colombo. An incident or situational map, like Google’s Alerthub, would have been informative in comforting the uncertainties.
The full report suggests that the number show massive potential for low-cost smartphones in this market. Sri Lanka’s mobile phone sales reached one million units in the third quarter of 2014 while smart phone shipment up by 100 percent which accounts for 20 percent of the total sales, a market report said. “Sri Lanka mobile handset shipments continue to show consistent growth in both the Feature phones as well as Smartphone segments, making it among very few South East Asian markets where growth was seen in both segments,” said CyberMedia Research, a Market Intelligence and Advisory firm in its report.
All the plans for advancing the lives of people in South Asian countries, including Internet access, are not likely to achieve fruition unless the electricity problems are solved. For this, one essential action is the the tapping of the abundant potential of the southern slopes of the Himalayas. Another is interconnection of the national grids of the South Asian countries. The Economist wrote about this, focusing on sub-continent, and leaving out Sri Lanka. A second reason, says Raghuveer Sharma of the International Finance Corporation (part of the World Bank), was radical change that opened India’s domestic power market a decade ago.
Based on writing and interviews done in June 2015 in the context of LIRNEasia’s events organized to mark the 10th anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami on December 2004 http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Regional/2014/12/22/Contributing-to-global-knowledge/. The first multilingual trials of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) – a data format for exchanging public warnings and emergencies between alerting technologies – were carried out in Sri Lanka as part of the Hazard Information Project funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre.