Former Foreign Employment Minister Manusha Nanayakkara on Friday urged overseas Sri Lankans to send remittances through formal banking channels rather than informal “Undiyal” transfers, citing renewed dollar-shortage pressures and the rupee’s slide to its lowest levels against the US dollar since the 2023 economic recovery.
In a statement, Nanayakkara said overseas workers had previously helped stabilise the economy during the 2022 crisis by sending foreign currency through official channels, and that the country needed a similar contribution now.
“Political ideology can be debated ideologically. But if the economy collapses, ideology alone cannot solve it,” he said, framing the appeal as cross-party.
The former Minister warned that using unofficial Undiyal-style remittance routes — which sometimes offer higher informal exchange rates — could worsen shortages of essential goods including milk powder, fuel and medicine by bleeding inflows from the formal banking system. Sri Lanka’s official remittance receipts feed directly into Central Bank reserves and are critical to bank-side dollar liquidity used for imports.
The appeal sits within a wider rupee-crisis discussion in which the Joint Apparel Association Forum has endorsed the Central Bank’s view that the slide is largely a global phenomenon, while opposition SJB MPs have characterised the foreign exchange market as frozen with the CBSL the only counterparty. Inter-bank dollar selling rates at major commercial banks have since softened to Rs. 340 as exporters resumed selling.
Nanayakkara’s intervention marks the first formal UNP-side appeal of the current rupee-crisis cycle and adds an ex-ministerial voice to a debate previously dominated by Central Bank officials and ruling-coalition spokespeople. The Government has separately introduced a 50 percent temporary surcharge on vehicle imports to ease dollar-demand pressure during the same period.
Source: Newswire — Former Minister urges overseas Sri Lankans to send remittances through banks.
