Govt rejects Verite poll on DDO & EPF

by Staff Writer 06-12-2023 | 6:48 PM

COLOMBO (News 1st); The Sri Lankan government has rejected the Verite survey report, which says that 77% of the people do not want the government to intervene in the EPF fund.

State Minister of Finance, Shehan Semasinghe, says that he rejects the report issued by the Verity Survey Institute, saying that 77% of the elderly population in this country has accepted that the government's decision to intervene in the Employees' Provident Fund under domestic debt optimization is not reasonable.

The minister makes the point that the questionnaire that was given to them and the sample chosen for the pertinent poll should be taken into account in this situation.

Earlier, the concerned institute presented a survey report showing that only 28% of the Sri Lankan population expressed their willingness to intervene in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to solve the economic crisis in Sri Lanka. The minister draws attention to the fact that the sample size was limited to 1008 individuals, or 0.0045% of the overall population.

According to Semasinghe, the domestic debt restructuring safeguarded the 57.2 million bank accounts held by Sri Lankan customers, as well as the Employees' Provident Fund and Pension Funds.

The minister further emphasises that Sri Lanka would have faced a grave crisis if the debt restructuring had not occurred. The minister added that the process of restructuring foreign debt was successful in part because of domestic debt optimisation.

The Minister added that the government of Sri Lanka will uphold the values of protecting openness during the debt restructuring process and treating all creditor nations equally. Semasinghe claims that all creditor nations appreciate their cooperation, and Sri Lanka primarily anticipates that they will extend the loan repayment period and reduce interest rates.

The Minister conveyed confidence that the second installment of the extended loan that the IMF is offering Sri Lanka will be approved by the Executive Committee without delay.

Verite Poll:

A Syndicated Surveys poll by Verite Research has revealed that 77% of Sri Lankan adults think that the government’s decision to reduce returns on the retirement savings in the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF), in the pursuit of domestic debt restructuring (DDR), was not necessary and/or not done in a fair manner.

This finding is from a survey round conducted in October 2023.

Survey responses:

Respondents were read out this information: “To help recover from the debt crisis the government reduced the returns on the retirement savings in the EPF". They were then read out two statements, and for each, asked if they agreed or not.

1) It was necessary to do it

2) It was done in a fair manner

Only 10% agreed with both statements — that it was necessary and done in a fair manner. 13% had no opinion or didn’t know about this issue.

44% of the respondents disagreed with both statements and 33% disagreed with one of the two. Therefore, collectively 77% think it was either not necessary to do it and/or that it was not done in a fair manner.

Sri Lanka completed a unique domestic debt restructuring (DDR) in September 2023, in which local currency debt restructuring exclusively targeted the retirement provident funds of formal sector workers.

The banking and financial sector, as well as private creditors and most public sector workers (that have a separate government pension scheme), were excluded. This might have set a new global precedent in DDR for adverse rather than preferential treatment of retirement funds.

Survey methodology

The survey was based on an island-wide, nationally representative sample of responses from 1,029 Sri Lankan adults. The poll has a maximum error margin below ±3.1% at a 95% confidence interval.

Syndicated Surveys is a survey instrument by Verité Research and the polling partner was Vanguard Survey (Pvt) Ltd. Syndicated Surveys also provides other organisations with the opportunity to survey the sentiments of the people of Sri Lanka through this poll.

Sources: State Ministry of Finance / Verite Research