Privatize the CPC!

Finally some sense on Sri Lanka's idiotic energy policy. Muttukrishna Sarvananthan from the Point Pedro Institute says the needful. Here's a quote from an LBO report:

"Sri Lankan consumers of petroleum products are not only paying for the rise in international prices," Sarvanandan said.

"They are also paying for the bloated bureaucracy, corruption and wastages at the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation. Privatisation of the CPC is long overdue. " [link]

While we are at it, add to the shopping list the Sri Lanka Transportation Board, Railways and the Ceylon Electricity Board. All making billions of rupees in losses. The last couple of paragraphs of the LBO report is rather telling,

Dallas Alahapperuma revealed last week that the state-run Sri Lanka Transport Board lost 4.0 billion rupees last year, and had 37,000 employees and had 6,000 excess employees at least.

Meanwhile private buses ran at a profit. The state rail service had 17,000 employees, lost 8.5 billion rupees.

Last year Sri Lanka Railways charged ordinary citizens 50 cents a passenger kilometre while state workers were charged only 5 cents a passenger kilometre. Rail workers were charged only 3 cents. [link]

Do read the whole thing. It beats me why Sri Lankans don't seem understand that at the end of the day someone will have to foot the bill of all those billions of rupees worth of losses from state-enterprises and subsidies, that someone is you, the tax payer. and when your government is so populist that it doesn't want to raise taxes to match this enormous spending, the bills come home another way -- it's called inflation.

Related, The Biggest Big Government