Manufacturing activities expanded at a higher rate in January 2019 compared to December 2018. This was mainly driven by the expansion in employment and production, especially in manufacturing of textiles, wearing apparels, leather and related activities. A significant improvement in employment was experienced with the recruitment of new employees to fill the vacancies. Accordingly, the production also increased with the enhanced level of employment as well as the orders carried forward from the previous month.

The Finance Company PLC (TFC), a Finance Company licensed under the Finance  Business Act No. 42 of 2011 (FBA) was severely impacted by the failure of a number of financial institutions within the group in 2008. Since then the financial status of the company deteriorated gradually and currently with severe liquidity issues, which need to be addressed, immediately. Although, several efforts were made to identify prospective investors and to restructure the company, such efforts have not materialized yet. Thus the continuity of current status will be further detrimental to the interest of depositors and other stakeholders of the company.

Payment cards provide customers the convenience of withdrawing cash through Automated Teller Machine (ATM) network and transacting through merchants worldwide. However, there is a possibility that ATM and card reading machines can be abused by criminals in order to steal customer funds from their accounts. To mitigate such incidents, international payment card security standards and best practices have been adopted in Sri Lanka’s ATM and payment card network, such as issuance of cards with increased security which have an electronic chip (EMV) and provide for SMS alerts for all electronic transactions.

The year-on-year growth of broad money (M2b) continued to expand at a high rate of 17.0 per cent in October 2015 compared to 16.0 per cent recorded in the previous month, driven by the expansion of credit extended to both private and public sectors by the banking system. Amongst contributory factors, credit granted to the private sector by commercial banks increased by 26.3 per cent, year-on-year, compared to 22.2 per cent in the previous month. Tentative data for November 2015 also shows that credit flows to the private sector continue to expand at a high rate. Meanwhile, excess liquidity in the domestic money market continues to remain high, fuelling monetary expansion.