When Chandrika, who came to power in 1994, appointed A.S. Jayawardena as Secretary to the Ministry of Finance, it was as if a bomb had gone off within the government. A.S. Jayawardena had begun his career as a junior executive officer at the Central Bank. When Chandrika assumed power in 1994, he was serving as the Secretary to Prime Minister Ranil’s Ministry of Industries. Accusations arose from within the government itself that he was Ranil’s agent — a mole planted by Ranil within Chandrika’s administration to sabotage its work. Yet Chandrika dismissed these concerns. She was not a leader with administrative experience, and for this very reason, she was reluctant to appoint someone as inexperienced as herself to the position of Secretary to the Ministry of Finance. Since the secretary who had served under Ranil’s ministry was a seasoned and upright official, she appointed him to the post.
She was right to do so. Since independence in 1948, the position of Secretary to the Ministry of Finance had always been entrusted to the most senior officer in the administrative service. Successive governments thereafter appointed either a senior figure from the administrative service or an experienced officer from the Central Bank’s executive cadre — someone with a strong grounding in economics.
It was Ranil who changed this precedent. When Ranil came to power in 2002, he appointed his friend and UNP Chairman Charitha Ratwatte as Secretary to the Ministry of Finance. However, Charitha was not without credentials — he had served as Chairman of the Youth Services Council under J.R. Jayewardene, as Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Youth Affairs, and had overseen the ‘Janasaviya’ programme during the Premadasa administration. Holding the post of Secretary to the Finance Ministry, he steered a deficit-ridden economy back into surplus through disciplined fiscal management.
Even when Mahinda became President, he entrusted the Finance Ministry Secretaryship to P.B. Jayasundera, a veteran of the Central Bank. Although powerful figures within Mahinda’s government — including Wimal Weerawansa — labelled P.B. a contractor for the IMF and World Bank, Mahinda hesitated to remove him precisely because, despite holding the Finance portfolio himself, he lacked experience in the workings of the Finance Ministry.
The Maithri-Ranil government that came to power in 2015 appointed Dr. R.M.S. Samaratunga as Secretary to the Finance Ministry — an official who had entered the administrative service in 1984 and served in key economic institutions across the country, including the Monetary Board and the Finance Commission of the Central Bank.
When Gotabaya became President in 2019, he appointed S.R. Attygalle — a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank with 27 years of service — as Finance Ministry Secretary. Following the economic collapse and bankruptcy of the country, Mahinda Siriwardena, who had served as Deputy Governor of the Central Bank for 30 years, was subsequently appointed to the post.
When Ranil became Finance Minister and later President in 2022, he did not change Gotabaya’s appointment. When Anura assumed the Presidency in 2024, Mahinda Siriwardena was still serving as Secretary to the Finance Ministry. Upon becoming President and taking over the Finance portfolio, Anura too chose not to replace him — just as voices from within the government had urged Chandrika to make a change in 1994, similar calls were made within Anura’s administration as well.
When Anura assumed the Presidency, he was a person with no administrative experience whatsoever. Whether out of that recognition or out of fear that the IMF programme might be derailed, he refrained from replacing Siriwardena. Eventually, when the latter retired, Anura appointed Harshana Suriyapperuma — a representative of the JVP — as Secretary to the Ministry of Finance. Suriyapperuma is not someone who gained experience through Sri Lanka’s administrative service or the Central Bank. He is a person who worked in the private sector. His only relevant qualification for the Finance Ministry Secretaryship was his service as a Director of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
He was a prominent figure in Anura’s 2024 presidential election campaign. For this reason, he was brought into Parliament through the national list at the 2024 general election and subsequently appointed as Deputy Minister of Finance. He later resigned from that position to take up the role of Secretary to the Finance Ministry — marking the first time in Sri Lanka’s history that a sitting Member of Parliament resigned to be appointed Finance Ministry Secretary.
Now, USD 2.5 million paid by the Treasury to a creditor in Australia has fallen into the hands of hackers. This is the first such blunder in Sri Lanka’s financial history — and it is no ordinary mistake. It is a grave and dangerous one. For a bankrupt nation to suffer such an incident at the very moment it is restructuring its debt to escape insolvency is a severe blow to Sri Lanka’s international reputation. Moreover, this money belongs to the taxpaying public — ordinary, innocent citizens. That their tax money has ended up in the hands of hackers is a failure of the Ministry of Finance.
In 2016, hackers breached the Bangladesh Central Bank and siphoned funds from its foreign reserves. A portion of those funds had reached Sri Lanka’s Pan Asia Bank. The then Maithri-Ranil government and Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake intervened and facilitated the return of those funds to Bangladesh, for which the Bangladesh government expressed its gratitude to Sri Lanka.
At the time, Sheikh Hasina’s government in Bangladesh viewed the incident as a national disgrace — a humiliation for both the government and the country. She immediately called upon the Governor of the Central Bank to take responsibility and step down. The Governor duly accepted responsibility and resigned.
In Sri Lanka’s case, this incident has occurred not at the Central Bank, but within the Ministry of Finance itself.
Will Finance Minister Anura call upon Secretary Harshana Suriyapperuma to take responsibility and step down…?
The entire nation watches and waits.
