My Latest

I have a letter in today’s Daily FT.

Here it is in full:

I don’t blame the MCC for finally giving up on the Sri Lankan Government (“MCC withdraws $ 480 m compact offer”). The organization has wasted enough time and money.

Sri Lanka is facing serious economic problems that are unlikely to be resolved soon. Consequently, Colombo is not in a position to be passing up grants for responsible development projects.

Besides, criticisms of the MCC agreement relied almost exclusively on ethno-nationalist paranoia, misinformation, disinformation, and utterly baseless concerns about the island nation’s sovereignty.

By passing up free money, the Rajapaksa administration has committed a major unforced error.