Growing demand for urban TRANSPORT STRATEGY 0 1054

By : Kenneth De Zilwa

The Sri Lankan Banking system credit growth is strongly correlated with the economic activity of the country. The Correlation Coefficient between GDP growth rates and Banking Sector Annual Average Loan Growth is 0.76.

The Banking sector profits have witnessed a 25pct growth from 2016 to 2017. The growth comes on the back of highly volatilize exchange rates and interest environment in the economy. NII of the banking sector to showed a growth 12pct for the corresponding period, thus remaining flat from 2015.  Other income have accounted for 73pct while NII contributes circa 27pct of the total income of the Banking sector.

The Sri Lankan economy has recorded an average growth of 4.5 pct over the past 66 years. While only recording above average growth rates of 8pct post war in 2010, 2011 and 7pct growth rates in 2013 and 2014.  In 2015, 2016 and 2017 the economic activity declined and continued to grow marginally above the trend line growing   by 4.8pct in 2015, 4.4pct in 2016 and 4.0pct in 2017. Credit growth has decelerated from 32pt in 2016 to 18.1pct in 2017. Recording a  57pct year on year decline.

Banking sector credit growth has predominantly focused on the Industrial sector which accounts for circa 42pct of which housing and construction accounted for 75pct of the total, while services accounted for 30pct, within which tourism based credit creation was circa 29.3pct while consumption based credit lending stood at  21pct and agriculture 9pct.

Therefore Econsult anticipates that the slowing of credit growth would translate to an overall slowing of the real sector and lower GDP growth for 2018 to 3.0pct and 2019 to 3.5pct. On the back of tighter credit controls, declining agricultural supplies,  incremental VAT and taxation ushered in by the New Inland Revenue Act 2017, and the currency depreciations

The rating agency too have indicated that Banks would have to consider supplementing risk capital by cutting down dividend payout and consider further capital raising based on Basel III rules since CAR have come under pressure due to rising NPL’s to equity & reserves. This could mean that Banks would be forced to tighten credit while adopting more secure means of lending. Such outcomes could pose more issues to the already choked real economy. The recent deceleration of the economy is bound to hit the banking sector in Q4 2018 and Q1 2019.

Source : CBSL Annual Report & Thmosonreuters

In the book titled ‘Marx’s ‘Theory of price and its Modern Rivals’, Sri Lankan born and educated Prof. Howard Nicholas exposes the flaws in the many theoretical debates in money, price and inflation. This he does by revealing the inconsistencies and contradictions in economic theories submitted to explain price. This is nothing new in Sri Lanka and many developed countries attributable to the fact the certain economists, due to a false understanding, are misled on what price is all about. Therefore, let us examine this false interpretation and try to understand the real parts that from PRICE which we play in commerce.

According to Prof. Nicholas, Orthodox economists starting with David Ricardo have not quite understood the concept of ‘price’ and how it is computed. He argues that the explanation of price by Marx, who had a deep understanding of the capitalist system, is more logical and clear. To understand Price we have to first understand how commodities bearing a price tag are produced and marketed. Prof. Nicholas who refers to this process as the- Production Cycle’ explains that present day economists go astray since at the outset they focus only on the process of exchange, assuming individuals are naturally endowed with commodities. This mistake causes them to ignore cost of production and focus on individuals and their choices when explaining prices.

A second important point made by Prof. Nicholas in his book is that when explaining price, from the outset we need to bring money into the picture. This is, to explain prices as money- prices. When products calculate the values of their commodities, they do so in terms of money thereby setting money prices. Buyers of goods in markets make payment in accordance with these money- prices. According to economic orthodoxy, the prices that matters are relative prices. That is, the price of one product in terms of another and not in terms of money. In fact, although this may not be so apparent when reading standard economics text books, money has no role to play in the basic explanation of prices. It only makes its appearance when macro-economic phenomena, in particular the aggregate level of prices are considered.

The third major argument prof. Nicholas advances is that the basis for explanation of cost of production of the commodity as its money cost of production, needs to be seen as the labour time spent in production. This is what Marx referred to as the value of commodity. Labour time spent in production amounts to money costs, when money represents labour time by itself. This happens when money is used by producers, to depict the value of the product. The importance of explaining prices is perhaps best been by producers, to depict the value of the product. The importance of explaining prices is perhaps best seen by the present downward pressure on global prices, resulting from the massive technological change across the globe. Despite unprecedented levels of printing of currency by Central Bank of major countries, world inflation rate has continued to fall down. This underlines the importance of labour productivity in explaining price, and the incorrect explanation of money and price by economists. It may also be the clearest practical support for Marx’s price theory as seen by Prf. Nicholas

By : Dr Kenneth De Zilwa