Madam Chair,

I thank Assistant Secretary General and Regional Director at the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific of the UNDP Madam Kanni Wignarajah for presenting the Country Programme Document for Sri Lanka for the term 2023-2027 notwithstanding the difficult economic environment. The crisis is referable to multiple compounding factors such an adventurous tax policy, money creation, a mistiming of a nationwide policy to shift to organic or biological farming, the 2019 Easter bombings, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Sri Lanka and finally exacerbated by the present crisis in Eastern Europe.