Archive for the ‘Economy’

Strengthening innovation in Sri Lanka: In conversation with Anushka Wijesinha

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Anushka Wijesinha is a Research Economist at the Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka and is one of the most prominent voices in Sri Lanka today championing innovation. We begin by Anushka explaining what innovation means to him in a Sri Lankan context, and why it is so important to support it in post-war Sri Lanka. In talking about innovation as a system, he talks about the differences between Research and Development and innovation. Anushka is then asked whether he sees enough of that which he champions and sees as innovative policies, products and practices in Sri Lanka today. We then talk about the nature and indeed crisis within Sri Lanka’s tertiary education system – from ossified curricula to outdated pedagogy – as stymieing the growth and potential of innovation. Anushka then looks at how failure can be instructive for innovation, and whether cultures and countries that embrace failure are more innovative than those, like Sri Lanka, which censure…

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Real and Phantom Per Capita Income in Sri Lanka

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Image courtesy Colombo Gazette The Per Capita Income (PCI – average annual income per person) is derived by dividing the Gross National Product/Income (GNP/I) of a country by the total population of a country during a given period of time. It is a commonly used yardstick for practical and analytical purposes. However, it is important to understand that the per capita income of a country does not necessarily indicate the level of development of that country. For example, according to the World Development Indicators 2012 of the World Bank, while the Per Capita Income of Cuba was $5,520, PCI of India was $1,270, PCI of Timor-Leste was $2,220, and Sri Lanka’s Per Capita Income was $2,240 in the year 2010. The foregoing figures do not imply that Cuba is economically better-off than India or Sri Lanka; similarly it does not imply that Sri Lanka is economically better-off than India, and Sri Lanka and Timor-Leste are on par in terms of…

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Waning Economic Euphoria and the Impending Crisis of Governance

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  Photo courtesy Media Centre for National Development of Sri Lanka The immediate post-civil war years of 2010 and 2011 in Sri Lanka were trumpeted as record-breaking eight percent or greater annual real growth rate of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for two consecutive years including the highest ever economic growth rate of 8.3% recorded in 2011. However, the GDP growth rate in 2012 is unlikely to exceed six percent and the prospect for 2013 is even less. Besides, post-civil war economic growth rates all over the world are always in double-digit and therefore there is nothing to gloat about the high single-digit growth rate in Sri Lanka in 2010 and 2011. The quarterly GDP growth plummeted to 4.8% during the third-quarter 2012; lowest quarterly growth rate since third-quarter 2009 (4.2%). The agriculture sector, in particular, recorded negative growth of (-) 0.5% during the third-quarter 2012 largely due to severe drought. The agriculture sector is expected to have declined even…

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Waking up to migrant employment through Rizana Nafeek

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Image via BBC Much is written on Rizana Nafeek’s extremely unfortunate fate in Saudi Arabia (SA). Some written with anger let loose on the government and some on licensed agencies and every one else who could be dragged in. But to discuss SL migrant labour, one has to leave emotions aside and start off with a factual explanation of what this whole issue is. An extremely deprived, poor Muslim family from Muttur, decided to find some stability to their living by sending their 17 year old eldest daughter for employment in the Middle East. In 2005 the salary would have been around LKR 16,000 (USD 150) per month and that for them would have been substantial. The Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) does not approve House Maid (HM) applicants below 30 years for SA. At least in Sri Lanka the only instance when young girls agree to declare their age above the actual age is, when they want…

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The Rajapaksa ‘Sangamaya’: Creating employees and customers of citizens

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Image from Lanka Standard The following video features the last couple of a minutes of a longer speech delivered by Dr. Nihal Jayawickrama at the launch of The Sri Lankan Republic at 40: Reflections on Constitutional History, Theory and Practice, a collection of scholarly essays edited by Asanga Welikala, a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives (the institutional home of Groundviews) on 21st December 2012. In this excerpt, Dr. Jayawickrama offers a devastating critique of the Rajapaksa administration and its mode of governance. He notes that Sri Lanka today has moved beyond an Executive Presidency based model to a corporate governance mode for the entire country – the Rajapaksa ‘sangamaya‘ (or company) – as noted by the President’s brother, Basil Rajapaksa. After flagging in brief some of the serious challenges that arise from this mindset and mode of governance, Dr. Jayawickrama ends with a pertinent question: “What if the [Rajapaksa] ‘samagama‘ goes bust? The speech in full can be viewed…

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Whose beaches in Sri Lanka?

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Photo by AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe, via Sulekha Tourism will bring millions to Sri Lanka but will we see any of it? During the last week of October this year, the BBC Sinhala Sandeshaya service featured a story about Sri Lankan tourism, which was in turn aired by the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation. The piece drew particular attention to irregularities in development and other environmental concerns caused by the tourism industry in Sri Lanka. In the same dialogue, a civil society organization (CSO) representative raised the issue of poor environmental management, referring to the establishment of camp sites within the country’s nature reserves. This action is illegal under the provisions stipulated in the Flora and Fauna Act of Sri Lanka. The Deputy Minister Laxman Yapa Abeywardena responded to these allegations by slinging mud against the CSO engagements on various aspects of the issue: “When there is a tourism project proposed by an investor, we follow all the rules and regulations according…

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Re-imagining development in Sri Lanka: In conversation with Nilakshi De Silva

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Nilakshi De Silva is a Senior Research Professional at the Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA), and in this interview, talks about the multi-faceted challenges facing development in Sri Lanka post-war, including the nature and extent of poverty in the country. She is the second interviewee from CEPA featured on Groundviews this year, the first being CEPA’s Executive Director, Priyanthi Fernando. The interview with Nilakshi is anchored to Re-imagining Development? An Exchange of Ideas based on the Sri Lankan Experience, the title of CEPA’s 2012 Symposium looking at equitable, sustainable, inclusive development in Sri Lanka. Though the Symposium’s dedicated site features a lot of interesting content but no real conversation around some of the ideas flagged in this interview, CEPA’s institutional output has for years focussed on development as more than just economic prosperity or year on year GDP growth. Early on in the conversation, Nilakshi flags the importance of looking at poverty not just as something that afflicts the poor,…

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Challenges for a Sustainable Economic Development in Sri Lanka

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Image courtesy Norwegian Embassy, Sri Lanka First of all, I would like to define sustainable development.  According to the Brundtland report it is “a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” But it is important to go further in the definition: “Sustainable development has 2 concepts: the first one is the needs, particularly the needs of the poor, to whom priority should be given. The second is the idea that the actual state of technology and social organization impose limitations to the capacity of the environment to satisfy present and future needs.” This definition is an invitation to think differently. Sri Lanka has to thrive by following this path for a sustainable development, which is taking care of poverty, and economic development while taking into account environmental constraints. Sri Lankan growth rate is high (8%), true story, but if we dig a little further, we can see…

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Impeaching Sri Lanka’s Chief Justice: A primer

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Image courtesy Read Sri Lanka [Editors note: The Supreme Court ruling on the Divineguma Bill presented to Parliament just before this article was published noted that the Bill has to be passed with 2/3rd majority in Parliament and that Clause 8 has to be approved at a referendum. See original tweet by Daily Mirror here.] The current battle between the Judiciary and the Executive/Legislative, culminating in the ongoing attempt by the government to impeach the Chief Justice, has received a lot of attention in the traditional media, and on Facebook and Twitter. People who don’t usually bother keeping abreast of the goings on in the country have been activated enough to post messages and share articles on FB. However, most of them don’t seem to be aware of the context to this crisis and how it has developed in relation to two other important current issues, the Divi Neguma Bill and the debate about the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Here’s my…

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Socialism?

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Photo courtesy socialistworld.net Over the past months there has been a debate in some newspapers regarding socialism and/or socialism vs. capitalism. It is a great thing to see happening, especially as the globalised economic downturn intensifies and is sure to be a long-lasting one. In this debate, however, it is sometimes hard to see what is exactly meant by the word ‘socialism.’ For example, many people term the policies of the Bandaranaike governments as socialist – because there was a tendency to have the government run certain industries, such as transportation, steel and insurance, or to have state welfare programmes. If such is the definition, then most European countries and even the United States would qualify as socialist on some ground or another. Others seem to define socialism as being what existed in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries: this involved a heavy state hand in not only industrial and agricultural production, but in controlling dissent and thought via…

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In conversation with Shashi Tharoor: India, literature, politics and South Asia

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Having moderated a session with Shashi Tharoor earlier this year at the Galle Literary Festival, we met up again in Colombo last week to talk about the writer-politician’s new book, and his views on literature, politics, the freedom of expression and our region. Shashi Tharoor is a well known writer, speaker and politician. From Riot to Bookless in Baghdad, Shashi’s books, whether fiction or non-fiction, are fulfilling to read. In Galle we spoke about The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone: Reflections on India in the 21st Century, published first five years ago. He’s just published his latest, Pax Indica: India and the World of the Twenty-first Century, which at the time of writing, isn’t yet available in Sri Lanka. This placed me at a disadvantage in speaking about the book in detail, though we did start our conversation by going into what the tome addressed. We go on to talk about Shashi’s writing, and how he manages to do…

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Video on Mediated: Hard data on Sri Lanka, through art

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Mediated is an art project that essentially seeks to create greater awareness around and engagement with aspects of post-war Sri Lanka’s ideational, constitutional, economic, social and religious challenges. Four individuals – a researcher, an economist, a constitutional theorist and an award winning novelist – were invited to give submissions that were anchored to issues vital to a greater and deeper social and political understanding of Sri Lanka today. Four artists were invited to engage with this primary resource material and interpret it so that it through what they produced, attention was focused on the inconvenient, critical engagement expanded and public apathy challenged. The Gallery is open daily from 18:00 – 20:00 and the exhibition closes on 15 September 2012. Young Asia Television was present to cover the opening of Mediated. This segment is from their Connections programme of 10 September 2012, which can be viewed here. Mediated – Opening Night from Centre for Policy Alternatives on Vimeo. Repost This Article

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Rural entrepreneurship in post-war Sri Lanka: Jobs for youth and ICTs

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Her day job aside, Sandya Salgado is a Director of the Foundation for Advancing Rural Opportunity and approached Groundviews recently to talk with us about the organisation’s model for rural entrepreneurship in particular, and the prospects for BPO writ large in post-war Sri Lanka. In this brief conversation, we first talk about FARO’s BPO model which supports rural entrepreneurship through ownership of shares in the BPOs set up in Mahavilachchiya, Seenigama and Uduvil, in Jaffna. Sandya’s point is much broader than FARO – she speaks of the need to nurture business intelligence amongst Sri Lanka’s rural youth, and encourage a culture where they become shareholders in the companies they create. We talk about the challenges facing the BPO industry in Sri Lanka including the shortage of skills, as well as English language impediments. Sandya talks about the advantages of developing entrepreneurship amongst the rural youth, and flags an interesting trend, that more women seem to opt to stay in rural…

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Fishing in Turbulent Waters

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Introduction Newly initiated development projects in the Northern and Eastern Provinces in post-war Sri Lanka are expected to open new avenues towards ethnic reconciliation, as proclaimed not only by government media but also by the mainstream development scholarship. However, this popular perception about opening up new avenues for reconciliation through development seems to foreclose certain barriers and obstructions existing within the so called development highway itself, especially with regard to ethnic minorities. To understand the possible political and other forms of repercussion of the currently existing development-community encounter, one should turn one’s ears not only to the subject-agents of the development discourse but also to those who are subjected to the development industry, considering the fact that the subalterns also are involved in creating meanings (or counter-articulate the dominant discourse, as Laclauian discourse analysts would suggest) in their own way. This piece explores the ways in which the local communities in the Northern fishing villages receive the messages enunciated by…

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  • 26 Mar, 2012
  • 35 Comments
  • Colombo,
    Economy,
    Peace and Conflict

After the fuel hikes and slide of rupee: State of Sri Lanka’s economy and future prospects

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Dr. Neavis Morais is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the Open University of Sri Lanka, and in this interview looks at the state of Sri Lanka’s economy. As couple of days ago the Economist Intelligence Unit noted that, tweet Around the same time, Sri Lanka’s Central Bank said it cut this 2012′s economic growth target to 7.2 percent, down from 8 percent. There’s a big difference between the Central Bank’s and the EIU’s growth projection. The interview begins with Dr. Morais looking at this significant discrepancy, and why it exists. He notes that whatever the Central Bank says, it is highly doubtful Sri Lanka will achieve anything close to 7% GDP growth, and flags the failure of macro-economic reforms targeting economic growth as a central factor. Dr. Morais also speaks about the Revival of Underperforming Enterprises and Under Utilised Assets Act, which was rushed through Parliament as an urgent Bill last year and notes that it sends the wrong…

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About Groundviews

Located at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Groundviews is a citizen journalism website that uses a range of genres and media to highlight critical perspectives on governance, reconciliation, human rights, the arts and literature, democracy and other issues. The site has won two international awards, including the prestigious Manthan Award South Asia in 2009. The grand jury's evaluation of the site noted, "What no media dares to report, Groundviews publicly exposes. It's a new age media for a new Sri Lanka... Free media at it's very best!"

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