Three new Monetary Board members assume duties

The Central Bank yesterday announced the assumption of duties of three new members—Sanjeewa Jayawardena PC, Dr. Ranee Jayamaha and Samantha Kumarasinghe— as serving members of the Monetary Board of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL).

They were appointed by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, under Section 8(2)(c) of the Monetary Law Act, with the approval of the Constitutional Council.

Jayawardena was appointed as a Member of the Monetary Board with effect from February 2, 2020 and Dr. Jayamaha and Kumarasinghe with effect from 
June 29, 2020.

Jayawardena is the first President’s Counsel to serve on the Monetary Board of the CBSL. He presently serves as Chairman of the Monetary Board Risk Oversight Committee and has also been appointed as Chairman of the Ethics Committee of the CBSL.

Jayawardena has been practicing exclusively in the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal for the last 27 years, having been called to the Bar in 1992. 

He was thereafter conferred Silk, as President’s Counsel, in the year 2012. He specialises in all aspects of Appellate law, as well as Constitutional and Public law and has a varied practice in diverse fields and subjects, including civil, contractual, commercial, property, taxation, banking and other disciplines of the law.

Jayawardena was appointed as a Commissioner of the Law Commission of Sri Lanka by then-President Maithripala Sirisena, in the year 2015 and he was recently reappointed by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to the Law Commission, for a fresh term of five years.  

Previously, he was appointed as a member of the Legal Cluster of the National Council for Economic Development, chaired by then-Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva PC. He was a one-time appointee to the Intellectual Property Commission of Sri Lanka. 

Jayawardena was a recipient of the Ten Outstanding Young Persons of Sri Lanka (TOYP) award in the year 2004. He is an Honours graduate in Law, LLB (Hons), of the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo and has also secured an MPhil in law from the same institution and has presently completed his doctoral thesis, for due submission, in the Ph.D. degree programme of the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo. 

He has served as a member of the Special Committee of the MPhil degree in law of the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo and has also served as an examiner of both the LLM and MPhil postgraduate degree programmes and has delivered guest lectures at the faculty. He is on the Advisory Board of the LLB degree programme of the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology. Jayawardena’s father, the late Stanley Jayawardena, also served on the Monetary Board, from March 1, 1989 to September 12, 1994.

Dr. Jayamaha has been appointed as Chairperson of the Monetary Board Advisory Audit Committee of the CBSL. She also currently serves as a Director at Overseas Realty (Ceylon) Ltd and the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies and as a Member of the Governing Council of the Marga Institute. 

Dr. Jayamaha has more than 45 years of extensive national and international experience in macro and monetary economics, central banking, regulation and supervision, payment systems, including e-money deployment and financial inclusion. 

She was a career central banker, who served the CBSL for nearly 38 years, retiring in 2009 as Deputy Governor in-charge of financial system stability. She was instrumental in modernising the payment systems and automating the accounting and reporting systems of the CBSL. 

During her tenure at the CBSL, she served (on secondment) as Secretary to the Presidential Commission on Finance and Banking, Advisor to the Finance Ministry and Special Advisor (Economic) at the Commonwealth Secretariat, London, UK. 

She has served as an Advisor to President on banking from 2009 to 2015 and as Chairperson of Hatton National Bank PLC, from 2011 to 2015. 

On the international finance and banking front, Dr. Jayamaha has served as Lead Consultant (South Asia) for the World Bank Group, as an Advisor on Payment Systems to the Central Banks of Bangladesh, Brunei, Bhutan, Iran and the Maldives. 

She was also a Member of the Global Payments Group of the World Bank, Advisor to the G-8 Remittance Group and a Member of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) General Payment System Guidelines Committee. Dr. Jayamaha has more than 35 national and international publications to her credit, including the publication ‘The Money Pipeline – A Pillar of Financial Stability’. 

Dr. Jayamaha obtained her BA (Hons) degree in Money and Banking from the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya, her M.Sc. in Economics from the University of Stirling, UK. Her Ph.D. was awarded by the University of Bradford, UK in Monetary Economics. She was also awarded with DUniv – ‘Doctor of the University’ by the University of Stirling, UK.

Meanwhile, Kumarasinghe currently serves as Chairman and Managing Director of several companies in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Vietnam that operate in industrial sectors across cosmetics, textile chemicals, household cleaning products, organic food and biological fertilisers. 

He currently serves as a member of the Presidential Task Force for Economic Revival and Poverty Eradication (2020), President of Lanka Industry Forum for Empowerment (LIFE) (2018 to date) and Chairman of Cosmetics Sector Advisory Committee at the Industries Ministry (2016 to date). 

He has also served in the capacities of member of the Presidential Industrialisation Commission (from 2018 to 2019), a board member of the Insurance Board of Sri Lanka (2012 to 2014), a committee member of the Implementation of the Integrated Curriculum, Subjects and Review of Academic Activities Process of the Education Ministry (2013) and as Commissioner of the Presidential Taxation Commission (2009 to 2010). 

Kumarasinghe studied at Royal College, Colombo. He is a chemistry graduate from the University of Peradeniya and an alumnus of the Harvard Business School, USA. 

He started his entrepreneurial career in 1993, with just 12 employees and was adjudged Entrepreneur of the Year in 2008. He was awarded a Presidential National Honours Award in 2019, for his valuable contribution to the country.