http://drr.vau.ac.lk/handle/123456789/243 2026-09-05T14:55:57Z 2026-09-05T14:55:57Z Ravinthirakumaran, N. http://drr.vau.ac.lk/handle/123456789/2213 2026-08-25T06:12:50Z 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z

Forging a united Sri Lanka: Pillars of strength for a prosperous future Ravinthirakumaran, N. Sri Lanka’s long-term peace, stability, and economic prosperity depend fundamentally on its ability to strengthen national unity and social cohesion. Despite its rich cultural diversity and significant development potential, the country continues to face challenges arising from ethnic and religious divisions, poverty and inequality, youth migration, political polarization, institutional weaknesses, and inadequate leadership renewal. This paper examines six interconnected pillars essential for forging a united and prosperous Sri Lanka: racial and religious harmony, inclusive economic development, strengthening national identity, political consensus, a robust legal framework, and nurturing new leadership. Drawing on the country’s historical experiences and contemporary socio-economic challenges, the paper highlights the importance of inclusive education, equitable access to economic opportunities, social protection, diaspora engagement, policy consistency, institutional accountability, and inter-community dialogue. Particular attention is given to addressing the brain drain by creating attractive domestic employment and entrepreneurship opportunities while leveraging the knowledge, capital, and global networks of the Sri Lankan diaspora. The paper further emphasizes the need for political leaders to prioritize national interests over partisan considerations and for a stronger legal and institutional framework that safeguards equality, human rights, transparency, and accountability. Developing a new generation of ethical, inclusive, and competent leaders is identified as critical to sustaining these reforms. The paper argues that national unity should extend beyond mere coexistence towards shared prosperity, mutual respect, and collective responsibility. Strengthening these six pillars can help Sri Lanka overcome historical divisions, restore public and investor confidence, enhance social resilience, and establish the foundations for a peaceful, inclusive, and economically prosperous future.

2025-01-01T00:00:00Z Ravinthirakumaran, N. http://drr.vau.ac.lk/handle/123456789/2212 2026-08-25T06:09:54Z 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z

Unlocking Sri Lanka’s economic success: Harnessing the power of economic complexity Ravinthirakumaran, N. Sri Lanka’s prolonged economic challenges highlight the need for structural transformation beyond traditional sources of growth. This paper examines the role of economic complexity in strengthening Sri Lanka’s long-term economic growth, resilience, and global competitiveness. Economic complexity reflects the diversity and sophistication of a country’s productive capabilities and is closely associated with technological advancement, innovation, productivity, higher-value employment, and resilience to external shocks. The paper analyses Sri Lanka’s current economic structure, characterised by continued dependence on traditional exports such as tea, rubber, garments, and other relatively low-value products, and identifies key constraints to economic upgrading. These include limited industrial diversification, inadequate investment in research and development, technological gaps, skills shortages and brain drain, infrastructure deficiencies, policy instability, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and weak linkages between education, industry, and innovation. Drawing on international experiences from countries such as Japan, South Korea, Germany, and Singapore, the paper highlights pathways through which Sri Lanka can transition towards a more diversified, technology-driven, and knowledge-intensive economy. It proposes strategic priorities including industrial diversification, education and skills reform, increased R&D investment, digital and physical infrastructure development, high-technology foreign direct investment, renewable energy, stronger university–industry collaboration, and improved institutional governance. Particular attention is given to the potential contribution of the Sri Lankan diaspora through investment, knowledge transfer, entrepreneurship, technology diffusion, and international market linkages. The paper argues that strengthening economic complexity should become a central component of Sri Lanka’s post-crisis development strategy. A coordinated policy approach that integrates innovation, human capital, industrial policy, trade, investment, and institutional reform can enable Sri Lanka to move beyond traditional low-value exports towards a resilient, high-value, knowledge-based economy and achieve sustainable long-term economic prosperity.

2025-01-01T00:00:00Z Ravinthirakumaran, N. Iresha, M. Anjale, J. http://drr.vau.ac.lk/handle/123456789/2211 2026-08-25T06:06:19Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Harnessing Taxation for Economic Growth: An ARDL Analysis of Sri Lanka Ravinthirakumaran, N.; Iresha, M.; Anjale, J. Taxation plays a crucial role in mobilizing government revenue and influencing economic growth, yet its growth effects remain inconclusive, particularly in developing economies. This study investigates how taxation can be harnessed to support economic growth in Sri Lanka over the period 1991–2024, while incorporating key macroeconomic determinants including inflation, money supply, and trade openness. The analysis also accounts for the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2022 economic crisis. The study employs the Autoregressive Distributed Lag bounds testing approach and the Error Correction Model to investigate both long-run and short-run dynamics. The results confirm the existence of a stable long-run relationship among the variables. Tax revenue has a positive but statistically insignificant effect on economic growth in the long run, suggesting that taxation alone is insufficient to promote sustained growth without efficient revenue utilization. Trade openness exerts a positive and significant impact on growth, while money supply negatively affects economic performance. Inflation is found to be statistically insignificant. The findings further reveal that both the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2022 economic crisis have detrimental effects on economic growth, highlighting the vulnerability of Sri Lanka’s economy to major shocks. In the short run, taxation positively and significantly influences growth. The Error Correction Model coefficient of −0.635 indicates that approximately 63.5 percent of short-run disequilibrium is corrected within one period. The study recommends strengthening tax administration, improving the productive use of public revenue, maintaining macroeconomic stability, promoting trade openness, and enhancing economic resilience to future shocks. The findings suggest that taxation can contribute to economic growth when supported by effective fiscal management and a stable macroeconomic environment.

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z Premaratna, S.P. Maurice, D. Francis, S.J. Ravinthirakumaran, N. Kalaipriya, K. http://drr.vau.ac.lk/handle/123456789/2210 2026-08-25T06:02:39Z 2026-01-01T00:00:00Z

Inclusive Post-War Recovery through Employment, Entrepreneurship, and SME Resilience in Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka Premaratna, S.P.; Maurice, D.; Francis, S.J.; Ravinthirakumaran, N.; Kalaipriya, K. The protracted civil conflict and the subsequent COVID-19 pandemic created persistent economic challenges in Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka, including high unemployment, vulnerable livelihoods, and a fragile small and medium enterprise (SME) sector. This study examines pathways for inclusive post-war economic recovery through employment generation, entrepreneurship development, and SME resilience. The study employs a mixed-methods approach that combines household surveys, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and secondary data sources. The findings reveal that youth and women continue to experience disproportionately high levels of unemployment and underemployment, while SMEs face significant constraints related to access to finance, market integration, digital adoption, and long-term sustainability. Econometric analysis demonstrates that education, digital skills, access to credit, and diaspora-based mentorship positively influence employment outcomes and SME performance. Although diaspora remittances represent an important financial resource, the evidence suggests that they are largely directed toward household consumption rather than productive investment, limiting their contribution to regional economic transformation. The study highlights the importance of locally anchored and inclusive recovery strategies. It recommends targeted interventions, including blended finance mechanisms, diaspora–entrepreneur partnership platforms, digital capacity-building initiatives, and gender- and youth-focused enterprise support programs.

2026-01-01T00:00:00Z