Charging that the government had engaged in one of the largest economic assassinations in the history of Sri Lanka by agreeing to hand over 90 percent of the expected 14 billion barrels of oil in Mannar , the JVP today said a venture between the Sri Lankan government and a foreign company or even a venture which involves a local company and the state would have been a better choice for oil exploration.
 
JVP Parliamentary Group Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake told a news conference that the government should have looked at the options that were available instead of acting as an economic assassin instead of handing over this valuable resource to an Indian company.
 
Mr. Dissanayake therefore charged that the government had given large scale tax concessions to Carin Lanka (Pvt) Ltd which is to drill for oil in the Mannar Basin by naming it as a strategic development project.  He said legislations were passed giving the rights to the economic development minister to name any project as a strategic development project prior to giving tax concessions.
 
He therefore said the company was fully exempted from several taxes including the Ports and Airports Development Levy, Corporate taxes and VAT recently.

Mr. Dissanayake explained that the government had lost the opportunity of collecting 35% share of the profits by giving these concessions. He said the government is left with only 10a5 of the total 14 billion barrels which is the expected content of oil in the Mannar Basin.
 
He recalled that the contract was signed by neglecting the JVP’s request made in 2007 to appoint an all party monitoring committee with regard to oil exploration.

The JVP also explained as to how the government is going to spend $ 4.4 billion for the Commonwealth games if it cannot afford to spend $ 3 billion for the oil exploration. (Yohan Perera)