Sanjeeva Jayawardena appointed as Monetary Board member

The Constitutional Council recently approved the appointment of Sanjeeva Jayawardena PC as a Member of the Monetary Board of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.

A vacancy on the Monetary Board had arisen with the resignation of the Monetary Board member Chrisantha Perera.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had forwarded the nomination of Jayawardena, for the approval of the Constitutional Council, consequent to the said vacancy.

The Constitutional Council meeting chaired by Speaker of Parliament Karu Jayasuriya of February 20 approved the nomination of Jayawardena.

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, Leader of Opposition Sajith Premadasa, TNA Leader R. Sampanthan MP, Thalatha Atukorale MP, Bimal Rathnayake MP, State Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, former prominent diplomat and one-time United Nations Under-secretary General on Disarmament Jayantha Dhanapala and senior lawyer Javid Yusuf were the other members of the Constitution Council participated in the meeting. The Monetary Board comprises of five members—two ex-officio members and three appointed members. Central Bank Governor Prof. W.D. Lakshman and Treasury Secretary Sajith Attygalle serve on the current Monetary Board as ex-officio members.

Along with Jayawardena, the other two appointed members are senior banker Nihal Fonseka and Institute of Policy Studies Executive Director Dr. Dushni Weerakoon.

The three appointed members have to be appointed by the president with the concurrence of the Constitutional Council. Jayawardena has been practicing in the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal for nearly 28 years, having been called to the Bar in 1992. He was thereafter conferred with Silk, as a President’s Counsel, in the year 2012.

Jayawardena served as a Commissioner on the Law Commission of Sri Lanka. He was appointed as a member of the legal cluster of the National Council for Economic Development chaired by then Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva PC. He was a one-time appointee to the Intellectual Property Commission of Sri Lanka. Jayawardena was a recipient of the Outstanding Young Persons of Sri Lanka (TOYP) award in the year 2004.

He is an Honours graduate in Law as well as a holder of an M.phil in Law from the Faculty of Law of the University of Colombo and is presently a Doctoral candidate in the Phd programme in Law of the faculty. Jayawardena was educated at Royal College, Colombo. The Monetary Board is responsible for the formulation of the monetary policy of the country in terms of the Monetary Law Act and in addition, the Monetary Board is the governing body of the Central Bank and it is also responsible for the due administration of the Central Bank and vested with the powers, duties and functions of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.

Unlike the Central Bank, which does not have incorporated status, the Monetary Board is clothed with a corporate status and is a legal entity.

Jayawardena’s father, the late Stanley Jayawardena, too had served as a member of the Monetary Board in the late 1980s and was the first Sri Lankan Chairman of Unilever, as well as the first Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.