Economy

In September 2017 the Sri Lankan government launched an ambitious development plan, Vision 2025. The eight-year strategy aims to turn the country into an upper-middle-income one “by transforming Sri Lanka into the hub of the Indian Ocean, with a knowledge-based, highly competitive, social market economy”. While the government and the country...

Global trade faces protectionist headwinds that are dampening the outlook for growth in the coming years. According to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), trade volume grew by 4.7% in 2017 and is expected to have moderated slightly to 4.4% in 2018 and dip to 4% in 2019. Although this means growth will fall below the 4.8% average seen since...

Export industries received a welcome boost in May 2017, when the EU reinstated Sri Lanka’s Generalised Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+) status, which had previously been rescinded over human rights concerns in 2010. GSP+ status removes the majority of import duties on Sri Lankan goods entering the European single market, providing access to...

With a key geostrategic location in the Indian Ocean, international trade is a natural focus for Sri Lanka. The country has signed on to a variety of bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) over the years, with the most recent being the Sri Lanka-Singapore FTA (SLSFTA) in January 2018. Yet, as 2019 began, the SLSFTA ran into a...