Trishaw wisdom. I don’t quite understand, but I think it’s relevant.
Being middle class in Sri Lanka is expensive. I can live on like Rs. 300 a day, taking buses and eating on the corner. If, however, you want personal transport and, like, cheese you’ll spending as much or more than you would in the west. Seriously, cars and cheese are damn expensive here. You can pay like $10 for a packet of cheese slices and feel good about it. You can pay $50,000 for a used car. If you want to live comfortably poor it’s possible, but making the jump to middle class is damn hard.
Street Food
The lower class shopping basket is affordable, it just ends up being a huge percentage of what a working person makes. I can buy all my vegetables and fish from carts that come by in the morning. It’s like Rs. 500 to eat for a day pretty well (vegetarian, mostly). If I eat out at local kades I find it somehow cheaper than cooking at home. If I have two awesome meals out it’s like Rs. 200.
Food City
If, however, you go to Cargills or Keells you cannot walk out without dropping Gs. I actually avoid going in at all, it feels like a casino. You go in for a plastic jug and you come out with a 5,000 Rupee bill. I honestly don’t understand what happens, I just end up at home with a few plastic bags that contain nothing awesome at all. What gets you is the processed goods, which are imported, and which cost a ton. Honey Nut Cheerios can cost like Rs. 700. I gave up on that months ago.
This is where the rupee depreciation comes in. The Sri Lankan Rupee now buys much less cheese (as an example). I honestly haven’t had cheese in a long time. Some Swiss friends brought some, but unless they smuggle on the regular, I can’t afford it. If you buy a middle class shopping basket with meat, fast moving consumer goods, etc, you’re spending more than you would at Walmart.
Middle Class
Running a middle class family is honestly damn expensive. You need at least a lakh (Rs. 100,000) coming in each month to keep afloat, and that’s just barely. While the lower classes spend disproportionately on food, the middle classes spend disproportionately on personal transport, which is where the petrol hike hurts. A car costs like 3x more, petrol costs more, and iPhones or iPads (those middle class totems) cost about 2x more as well.
Education is also damn expensive. My sisters were on scholarship, but their stated fees at international schools were the same as my fees for University in Canada. Any parent in the affordable schools (ie, St. Thomas or Royal) is still spending on tuition, actually any kid at any school is taking tuition. Add the stuff up and the middle class is a tough rung to cling to.
Price Hikes
When petrol prices go up and the rupee depreciates (like now) the lower classes get hit in the stomach and the middle classes get knocked off their feet. Petrol is more expensive, imported food is more expensive, imported goods are more expensive.
I’m barely middle class and this is how it effects me: I don’t eat and I take public transit (till I get my car fixed). I, however, spend a bunch of money on the Internet – for servers, security services, backups, bits of code. I resell this stuff as services, but now my costs have gone way up. The dollar prices stay the same but now the rupees I’m buying them in buy less. The depreciation really hammers me there.
At the same time, the cascading petrol effect makes everything on my block more expensive, from bread to fish, probably meat. Anyways, this economic pain hits everybody. Contrary to popular belief, it’s safer for a government to kill its people than to fuck with their cars (ie, the energy supply). The failed Burma revolution was monks protesting over rising petrol prices. In Tunisia Mohamed Bouazizi immolated himself when they took his cart and economic ability away, setting off the Arab Spring on the price hammered youth all around the region. Even the American Revolution was spurred by taxation without representation (rising prices on tea and stamps and stuff).
People talk about the economy like it’s something over there, something technical, and it’s not. Like politics and ethnicity and speech is what really matters and the economy is a secondary concern. It’s not. The economy is right here. It’s daily life, it’s relations with the wife, it’s how comfortable you are looking at your kids. If you mess with the economy it messes with peoples lives, and that’s when they get political, cause their house is fucked up. In Sri Lanka it’s not at revolution level yet and the prices will hopefully settle. Right now, however there are protests from various trade unions and groups, and a fishermen in Chilaw was recently shot (super dumb and wrong). I think what we’re seeing is different interest groups asking for an exemption and everybody else is going to eat it.
Well said. The economy is about how one lives.
I think the starting wage for drivers is around 8000-12,000.
Garment factories starting pay for workers is around 12-15,000 but I think they provide food and maybe transport. How do they manage? I don’t know, but would like to know.
Cheese! (sigh) I avoid looking at the cheddar and brie and philly on the shelves and take the Kotmale instead. Highland used to be cheaper but not available in our parts anymore.
Ritzbury dark cooking chocolate (only 250/- for a huge 400g pack) microwaved on low and consumed with two drops of Bristol Irish cream to satisfy my chocoholic cravings. Cheaper than cocoa powder even to use for making sweet stuff. If Ritzbury sees this and ups the price I’ll kill myself.
Lots of little tips I’ve collected over the years. I think I’ll sell them if things get any more ‘tenuous’.
I think they all work longer hours for overtime pay.
Talk about dark chocolate :S. We are rationing the bar that we bought few months ago.
I’m working and living in the middle-east but planning to come back home to SL in a few months. Mainly because of kids. But the news I get about life back home scares the shit out of me! Life here is comfortable and affordable with the kind of salaries they pay here and of course because this is where oil is produced, the cause of all problems for us! I eat well (most of the food items including cheese, meat, fruits like apples and oranges, basmathi rice and milk are actually cheaper compared to SL), travel very well, live in a large apartment and have a good quality life. Only thing missing is a bit of alcohol and of course trees! Even back home I used to have a relatively comfortable life but I worked my ass off for that! That’s alright, I can keep doing that but what’s the result? Still if I can’t give a comfortable life to my family then what hope will I have? I love my country and I want my kids to grow up there whatever said and done. So there is no way I’m changing my decision. But it’s getting scarier by the day. I can at least afford to come back home but it really shatters me to think of the plight of our fellow Sri Lankans working in this part of the world as housemaids, drivers and at lower level jobs. These people will never be able to go home. They will have to keep pumping back money to feed and up-keep their governments and the politicians back home!
Food prices are high in SL partly because of high taxes- cesses, levies, duties all imposed in the name of protecting local farmers but in reality necessary to fund state expenditure.
A friend of mine will be visiting from UK next month, having learned his lesson on the last visit he will be bringing enough Weetabix and Cornflakes, plus a few other essentials to last him the trip here.
An aunt was telling me today that a friend of hers imports, amongst other things, fertilizer. When it comes into port, it has to pass through the hands of 9 different officials, each time there is an Rs50 charge. Most of this is sheer duplication of effort. Even if it only passed through one or two officials, charging double the fee each, it would be cheaper. I have experienced similar issues when collecting imported items, getting a driving license, obtaining planning permits, you name it. The public sector is fat with staff doing very little, in fact slowing things down.
The cost of having an incredibly inefficient public sector is increased costs to the private individuals and a system verging on instability. That’s not to say that private industry is free from this gross inefficiency. Your average Sri Lankan sales staff member has more colleagues than customers, shirks responsibility and doesn’t know or care much about the items he is charged with selling. From a foreign perpective, it’s quite perplexing why the owners of these businesses don’t change this. The inefficiency in Sri Lankan public and private sectors is stunning and yet a tricky problem to solve.
When times were full of war and death, these were trivial matters by comparison. When the war was concluded, concerns were drowned out by the triumphalism. Even Indi has posted a number of times about how Sri Lankans are getting richer, how things are getting better commodity price increases notwithstanding. Yet much of this optimism is based on a lie. It’s not a devaluation, it’s a real evaluation of the rupee. The GoSL has been spending way more than it earns for years, the deficit and debt rising year on year, government run organisations losing money hand over fist, no real effort made to reduce inefficiency, only to paint over the cracks and when the fat lady started singing (the IMF saying that it hadn’t been joking about the need for economic reality to hit home) the truth hurts. And it’s hurting the poorest the most, no least in the cack-handed way these changes are being introduced.
Jack – I will also bring my share of corn flakes and basmathi from here mate, when I leave this place to come back home. Usually when I’m on vacation I ship out a box of essential food items that I would need during the vacation. But this time around, this will be the last shipment! Hope it will last long!
I’ve read your analysis and posts, most of which Indi has been kind enough to point out, no pun intended, with interest and agree with most of what you say. I’m an accountant by profession so I tend to understand how the economies work, better than most I guess.
What type of job are you looking for. You can live quite decadently here for around 50k if you are just by yourself and don’t have any outstanding loans.
I don’t think the Sri Lankan middle class families have iPads or send their children to private schools that charge 2m a year.
Thanks man. Accounting market is a bit shit but guys returning from overseas get and edge due to overseas experience. There are a few jobs around but not many and include a couple that no one seems willing to to take.
Our free educational system is mostly a mirage. To get to university, etc you have to be at the top of your class. To get there for the most part your parents have to spend loads on tuition. Most of the tuition teachers are public school teachers who are paid crappily at schools, so have no incentive to put in any effort, etc at their day jobs but find being tuition teachers much more lucrative. So much for ‘free’ education.
You can’t have to be at the top of the class to get to university. You have to be top of the class to get to the top faculties. you can get into university with something like three Cs or two Cs & a S.
Really? For local universities?
If you are from outstation area you can probably get in with lower marks especially for the sciences.
Yes but then you have to be from an outstation area. Even then the marks are relative islandwide. The students from the outstations are the top of their class regionally.
Jack – Ya I see what you mean. Those few jobs that nobody’s willing to take must be the shittiest. Messed up accounts, tax problems and all. I know it will be difficult to find a job so I’m thinking of starting something up on my own to supplement whatever I will get. This WILL be difficult in the current happenings. I know I’m getting into tough and difficult territory here but it’s our country, where I was born, where I got my basic education from and where my kids were born and living. Plus I’m really tired of spending 9 to 12 hours working for someone else and getting minimum reward at the end of the day, in terms of everything, for so many years now. If I put those hours for my own thing and work really hard, I think I can live a much satisfying life with the people I’d rather be with. Keep up your analysis. It’s good work.
Our free education system is screwed up by every successive government and minister that came in for the last 30 years or so. As we all know it was much better during the 40s, 50s and 60s but no government has taken the initiative to reform it afterwards. “Sinhla only” policy also affected it in a very bad way. I agree with N here. Especially in urban areas “free” education is so over-hyped. Could be a lot different in towns and remote areas with less infrastructure facilities and less money. The real teachers are in these areas providing a real service. But the people are to poor to continue sending their kids to school. They will the need the extra help to earn a few extra bucks or take care of their younger siblings while parents go to work.
No thinking has gone into education sector/system of this country for a long long time. It’s a criminal offense we are committing as far as the younger and the future generations of us are concerned.
not at all. The minimum Z score for getting into applied sciences from the Colombo district is 1.1391. As per standard calculations, roughly speaking, if you live in Colombo, you can get into university for applied sciences if you are within the top 30% of the national rankings. It only get’s easier for outstation kids, for monaragala the Z score cutoff for applied sciences is 0.7 that’s about the 50th percentile.
http://www.ugc.ac.lk/en/university-admissions/minimum-z-scores.html?id=96&view=cutoff&district=COLOMBO
http://www.ugc.ac.lk/en/university-admissions/minimum-z-scores.html?id=96&view=cutoff&district=MONARAGALA
Getting into something like engineering or medicine is much harder 90-95% percentile
Your basing university admissions on the minimum required? That’s like expecting to get a job if you meet the minimum required standards irrespective of the hundred other applicants who have more achievements than that. There is intense competition for university places, I won’t bother with the figures because they are easily found. The point is that with the intense competition and the disincentives in the system for teachers to perform in the educational system and the incentives to give their all to the tuition industry the free education system is a mirage.
Minimum Z guarantees u admission.
That’s intriguing, so we really shouldn’t have an issue in our tertiary education system then? I wonder why less than 16% of those that qualify are admitted to the local unis.
Minimum z does not guarantee admission. Admissions will further depend on the no. of vacancies available as well. Which is way way less than the no of minimum z scores.
When i did A/Ls, the minimum Z score guaranteed admission. The minimum Z score won’t get you into the preferred university, but you will get a seat at some university to study whatever subject you qualify to study.
For example the minimum Z score of engineering maybe 1.9 but if you want to get into moratuwa you need 2 or above.
If the minimum Z score guarantees admission then how do you explain why according to the UGC website only 17% of qualified students were admitted to universities?
The qualifications getting into university are 3 simple passes. With three S you can even apply for moratuwa engineering or the colombo medical faculty, but you won’t get in. The UGC will cut off admission based on the Z score.
So the minimum Z score is a sliding scale?