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.