By 2014, tax revenue from cigarettes accounted for over 4.9% of total government revenue. However, thus far, Sri Lanka’s tax adjustments have been ad hoc, and driven by political and bureaucratic discretion rather than a ...

This report presents an analysis of the contradictory nature of the Budget 2013 through increased assistance to the poor, while at the same time increasing their vulnerability. The analysis of Budget 2013, rather than ...

Sri Lanka is highly dependent on international loans from multilateral and bilateral sources to finance infrastructure development. Multilateral and bilateral borrowing is often favoured by governments such as Sri Lanka ...

The report summarises Sri Lanka’s macroeconomic environment, analysing the 2012 budget and providing a comparative study of government expenditure. It finds that the focus of government expenditure has shifted from funding ...

The presentation discusses the cigarette tax indexation that was implemented by Sri Lanka’s Budget for 2019 (released in March). This indexation solved 2 problems of cigarette tax revisions in Sri Lanka—they were both too ...

The education sector had witnessed an overall decline in terms of budgetary allocations, and was also subject to inequality in distribution of educational opportunities within the country. Education inequality has implications ...

Goal number eight of the Sustainable Development Goals is set out as “Decent work and economic growth.” This goal recognizes that economic growth is not just an end, but also a means in itself of generating jobs – productive ...

The published information on debt underestimates Sri Lanka’s overall external public debt burden and its distribution amongst external lenders. This problem arises because Sri Lanka’s reporting of external debt is limited ...

In 2014, a data dissemination policy was introduced by the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) in Sri Lanka. The DCS is the primary agency responsible for the collection, compilation and dissemination of official ...

Multilateral and bilateral borrowing is often favoured by governments such as Sri Lanka because such financing tends to have ‘concessional’ elements, relative to the international financial markets. However, the cost ...