Sri Lanka Has Stability. But Does It Have A Future?
Sri Lanka Has Stability. But Does It Have A Future?
Sri Lanka Has Stability. But Does It Have A Future?
A fair-use commentary by Lehan Edirisinghe / AngryPages, responding to Harsha Gunasena’s Colombo Telegraph article, “Confused Macroeconomic Policies Of The Government.”
Harsha Gunasena’s article is useful because it separates two things Sri Lanka keeps mixing together: punishment politics and economic repair.
I understand why people want punishment. Sri Lanka was not simply “mismanaged” in some clean academic sense. It was abused, looted, lied to, over-borrowed, over-promised, and then handed a bill ordinary people had to pay. So yes, corruption matters. Justice matters. Political accountability matters.
But corruption cannot be the whole diagnosis. If the country says “corruption caused everything,” then the solution becomes theatre: arrest a few enemies, hold a few press conferences, call it national recovery. That is not enough.
The crisis was built over many years: deficit budgets, weak exports, state-owned losses, energy subsidies, expensive borrowing, bad tax policy, money printing, exchange-rate manipulation, the fertilizer disaster, delayed IMF engagement, and a political culture that preferred slogans to arithmetic. That is the harder truth. It is less emotionally satisfying than blaming one camp, but it is more useful.
The government deserves some credit for not gambling with the IMF programme. After 2022, no serious government had unlimited room for drama. Sri Lanka needed stability first. The IMF itself says recent reforms have supported recovery, with 2025 growth, reserve accumulation, and revenue performance exceeding expectations; but it also stresses the need for continued reform, resilience, and inclusive growth. (IMF)
That is the central point: IMF compliance is not a national development strategy. It is a floor, not a future.
Sri Lanka Has Stability. But Does It Have A Future? (2/3)
A country can pass fiscal targets and still fail its people. It can stabilise the exchange rate and still have households crushed by food prices. It can show good numbers and still produce too few exports, too few productive jobs, and too little hope for young people.
The World Bank has made a similar warning: Sri Lanka’s recovery remains incomplete, poverty is still elevated, food prices remain high, and many households have not recovered livelihoods lost during the crisis. (World Bank)
That is what macroeconomic debate often misses. People do not experience the economy as a table of indicators. They experience it as school fees, rent, eggs, bus fares, electricity bills, medicine, and whether their child has a reason to stay in the country.
Gunasena is also right to focus on exports and trade. Sri Lanka cannot tax and ration itself into prosperity. We need to earn from the world. That means exports, services, tourism, investment, logistics, digital work, better productivity, and cheaper inputs.
Protectionism is often sold as patriotism, but it can become a tax on poor people. If food, energy, and raw materials are kept expensive to protect narrow interests, then workers need higher wages just to survive, businesses lose competitiveness, and exporters struggle before they even reach the world market. The poor pay first. The productive economy pays next.
The Economic Transformation Act may not be perfect. But its export ambition matters. It set targets for exports of goods and services to reach 25% of GDP by 2025, 40% by 2030, and 60% by 2040, and created trade and investment institutions intended to push the country outward. (Lanka Law) If the government dislikes parts of that framework, it should amend it. But freezing the transformation agenda while meeting only IMF targets is not enough.
Sri Lanka needs an outward-facing economic plan. Not seminars. Not slogans. Not patriotic speeches against imports while everyone secretly wants dollars. A real plan.