The MCC Agreement — Everything You Need To Know About The “Controversial” MCC Agreement As a Sri Lankan Citizen.

Nowadays the typical calm atmosphere in Sri Lanka has been completely shaken off by the incoming presidential election. You can see almost every citizen having a political debate over who is the best and not focus on who will be the better choice that will do some good for the country in the long term. It is quite hilarious as some are truly debating to put their favorite politician on a pedestal while the others only want to justify their favorite so as to get that 5KG bag of rice per day along with that good old tasty local pint.
Now to make it worse, add the “oh so dreaded” MCC agreement that hit like a nuke on to the heads of change-hating citizens. Talk about adding fire to the fuel because this only added to the constant hate speech parading lot to get triggered even more. But the good thing is, a true intellectual who is more bent for the logical side of thinking came to light because they actually made some effort to learn what this “MCC Agreement” truly is and what it actually means to do. Simply ask a random citizen who’s waiting for a bus “What is the MCC agreement, what do you think about it?”. The most typical answer would be “Foreign forces/ invasions/ plots” or “blame the currently most hated politician or blame the political party which is the currently most abhorred”.

That in itself is completely ridiculous. A true intellectual would have a stroke and die of laughter after hearing that “answer”. Don’t parade your stupidity if you’ve got no clue on what the hell you are speaking about. Read about it or at least do some research on Google god before you exhibit the world how much of an ignorant bufoon you are. Thus, here I am, writing this article after fully reading the MCC agreement draft released to the world on the lovely internet.
MCC derived — Everything You Need To Know About The “Controversial” MCC Agreement As a Sri Lankan Citizen

What in the world does this “MCC” stand for? Simply, MCC means “Millenium Challenge Compact”. I quote directly from the agreement draft, “ This Millenium Challenge Compact is between the United States of America, acting through the Millenium Challenge Corporation, a United States government corporation, and the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, acting through its Ministry of Finance ( the “Government”).
But the real question still remains. What exactly does this Millenium Challenge Corporation do and what is it? I quote “ The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is an innovative and independent U.S. foreign assistance agency that is helping lead the fight against global poverty.”. There you are. This is as simple as it gets. If you want to get to know this aid corporation better, I recommend you visit their website at MCC.goc/about. There you will get proper clarity on what they do and they truly stand for before screaming about “Foreign plots and forces in action to eat our country alive”. Hilarious. I do love me some good sarcasm because this agreement or this compact is actually to be submitted and exacted by the parliament of Sri Lanka according to the agreement draft meaning that the MCC cannot just come down to Sri Lanka and enact it. (Had to summarize for the dummies)
Okay back to the MCC agreement. Honestly though, what does the agreement hope to achieve? What is the end goal? This is a summarized overview: I quote from the MCC draft.
“committed to the shared goals of promoting economic growth and the elimination of extreme poverty in Sri Lanka and that MCC assistance under this compact supports Sri Lanka’s demonstrated commitment to strenthening good governance, economic freedom, and investments in People;
recalling that the government consulted with the private sector and civil society of Sri Lanka to determine the priorities for the use of MCC assistance, and developed and submitted to MCC a proposal for such assistance to achieve lasting economic growth and poverty reduction; and recognizing that MCC wishes to help Sri Lanka implement the program described herein to achieve the goal and objectives described herein..”
Woah there, hold up right there. Does it say what I think it says? So the MCC agreement didn’t just appear out of thin air. It didn’t just appear out of thin air at such a crucial time and it was neither bestowed upon Sri Lanka by the States. It says right there “recalling that the government consulted with the private sector and civil society of Sri Lanka to determine the priorities for the use of MCC assistance, and developed and submitted to MCC a proposal for such assistance to achieve lasting economic growth and poverty reduction”. Isn’t this juicy? If anyone involved in any of those parties above mentioned and claims they didn’t know anything about such a proposal → agreement was cooking in the oven, well I digress. It seems to me that a proposal was created and submitted to the MCC under the consultations of the private sector and civil society. Food for thought. Besides, I believe this summary concludes what the end goal of the proposed agreement is as well. Which is I quote again, “to achieve lasting economic growth and poverty reduction”.
An overview of the Agreement Goal and Objectives.
What exactly are the expected goals of the agreement? The goal is to reduce poverty through economic growth in Sri Lanka. In addition, they are obliged to provide assistance in a manner that hopes to strengthen good governance, economic freedom, and investments in the people of Sri Lanka.
Honestly, so far so good to me. This is how I see it and my personal view. Now, what are the objectives of these goals? I quote:
(a) to increase the relative efficiency and capacity of the road network and bus system in the Colombo Metropolitan Region and to reduce the cost of transport in order to facilitate the flow of passengers and goods between the central region of the country and ports and markets; and
(b) to increase the availability of information on private land and under-utilized State Lands in order to increase land market activity.
Thus there are two main objective projects. Which is a Transport project and a Land project. That pretty much summarizes it.
Footnote
For anyone that wishes to check the current milestones and situation of the Sri Lankan MCC agreement, visit Sri Lanka Compact at MCC PVT Ltd.
To take a look at the draft of the MCC agreement Sri Lanka, visit the official government reference site.
