Econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon has said that he hopes the re­sults of the State of Emer­gency (SoE) will not be tem­po­rary but that mea­sures put in place will con­tin­ue long af­ter the SoE is over.

He spoke with Guardian Me­dia on Tues­day night at a New Year’s Eve func­tion at the Pas­sage to Asia Restau­rant, Ch­agua­nas. He said the SoE is long over­due and should have tak­en place since the first quar­ter of 2024.

He said crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties have surged to alarm­ing­ly high lev­els, jeop­ar­diz­ing the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty and long-term growth prospects. He said, “El­e­ments of the SoE such as in­creased po­lice pres­ence and proac­tive mea­sures to curb the en­try and use of il­le­gal firearms should have been im­ple­ment­ed much ear­li­er to mit­i­gate these grow­ing threats.

Though crime is like­ly to de­crease dur­ing the SoE, it’s cru­cial to sus­tain this re­duc­tion with long-term strate­gies. Tem­po­rary mea­sures won’t suf­fice; with­out struc­tur­al re­forms and con­tin­ued vig­i­lance, crime may resurge once the SoE ends, threat­en­ing eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty, in­vest­ment, and pub­lic trust.

The SoE should pave the way for last­ing changes with com­pre­hen­sive crime pre­ven­tion poli­cies. Right now, vi­o­lent crime has erod­ed con­fi­dence among con­sumers and busi­ness­es. The SoE must have en­dur­ing ben­e­fits to re­store this trust.”

Dr Ar­joon said the de­ci­sion not to im­pose a cur­few to main­tain eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties is com­mend­able, but its ef­fects on busi­ness­es will dif­fer. He said, “Some may con­tin­ue as usu­al, while oth­ers may close ear­ly or re­duce op­er­a­tions due to fears of vi­o­lent crime flare-ups. Some con­sumers may al­so pre­fer stay­ing home for safe­ty and the over­all ten­sion of liv­ing un­der an SOE, lead­ing to de­creased sales, and prof­itabil­i­ty which im­pacts tax rev­enues.”

Ar­joon said with Car­ni­val ap­proach­ing, the po­ten­tial eco­nom­ic im­pact of crime and the SoE is con­cern­ing since tourism re­lies on safe­ty per­cep­tions.

He said, “Glob­al me­dia cov­er­age of the SoE and gang vi­o­lence might de­ter vis­i­tors, and lo­cal in­volve­ment may drop if the SoE per­sists. This could dam­age vi­tal tourism rev­enues and forex sup­port­ing var­i­ous busi­ness­es. Pre­serv­ing pub­lic con­fi­dence and quick­ly restor­ing a sense of se­cu­ri­ty are es­sen­tial to safe­guard­ing the eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of the Car­ni­val sea­son.”