The Central Bank emphasised that Sri Lanka should not compromise its regulatory integrity just to accommodate a few highly publicised commercial products and payment platforms. 

Central Bank Governor Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe noted that while Sri Lanka is open to adopting new digital technologies to better manage its finances, global corporations will still have to respect and abide by national regulations in their product schemes. 

“Anyone can come and introduce their technologies. We are open to everyone, but all must respect our regulations here.

 I don’t think we should compromise all the rules and regulations just to target specific commercial products. They can introduce them, subject to national regulations,” Dr. Weerasinghe stressed while addressing the Human Capital Summit 2024 recently.

“These regulations will be common, transparent, and applicable to everyone on an equal basis. That’s the principle,” he further added.  However, despite the stringent measures, Dr. Weerasinghe acknowledged that more needs to be done to facilitate digital technology adoption in Sri Lanka in order to modernise its regulatory technology architecture. 

“Digital technology adoption is quite low in Sri Lanka compared to the progress India has made. We have not made that kind of progress, but we are in the process. I certainly admit it is not enough,” Dr. Weerasinghe said. 
He emphasised the role of various institutions in promoting financial services under regulatory supervisions and digital financing, terming it as a multi-stakeholder collaborative effort. 

“As a regulating institution, we try to promote financial services, but the digitalisation of public digital infrastructure is a different kind of responsibility, mainly coming from other sectors. We are in the process of developing technologies and products for regulatory supervision and we have seen several new products, but there are a lot more things to be done,” Dr. Weerasinghe said. (NR)