Doubling up on GDP – Sri Lanka harvests ‘peace dividends’

SINCE 2009, when the Government finally defeated LTTE terrorists, Sri Lanka’s GDP has increased by more than 50 per cent to US$67 billion (2013), with per capita GDP up from US$2,057 to US$3,280 in the same period. Australia has become the ninth-largest source of FDI . . .

COLOMBO — Gross domestic product in Sri Lanka has increased by more than 50 per cent — from US$42 billion (2009) to US$67 billion (2013) — since Government military forces defeated the Tamil terrorist group LTTE after almost 30 years of fighting.

Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to Australia, Thisara Samarasinghe, points to what he calls ‘peace dividends’ — average GDP growth of five per cent (7.3 per cent in 2013) and an increase in per capita income to US$3,280 in 2013 from US$2,057 in 2009.

“When we spoke three years ago, I told you that the next two years would be crucial, especially in terms of FDI,” Samarasinghe tells ATI. “But we have succeeded – the economy has progressed more quickly than I had expected.”

Foreign investment totalling US$5,766 million has come into Sri Lanka since 2009 in manufacturing, infrastructure, services and agriculture. The main sources have been Malaysia (US$592 million), China (US$557 million), India (US$495 million) and Hong Kong (US$424 million).

Australia, which ranked as Sri Lanka’s 15th biggest foreign investor in 2009 (investment US$5.97 million), came in at ninth in 2014 with US$13.39 million in FDI. Key sectors of investment by Australian companies are in rubber, IT, garments, hotels and trading houses. The volhelpume of Sri Lankan exports to Australia has also increased, and tourism numbers from Australia to Sri Lanka are up by 30 per cent.

Samarasinghe says that, in terms of reconciliation, 1,100 members of the LTTE have been rehabilitated and released, with around 100 still held in custody, for further rehabilitation,or indictment.

He says the first provincial elections in 28 years have been held in Sri Lanka’s Northern province (where the LTTE was most strongly entrenched). Government candidates failed to win at the poll, but Samarasinghe says the Government continues to put what he calls “a tremendous amount of financial and human resources” into both the Northern and Eastern provinces of the country.

As a result, there has been 27 per cent economic growth in the East and 23 per cent in the North. “Their contribution to the national economy is increasing. But if the Northern regional government would co-operate more fully with the Central Government, we could do much more for the people.”

Samarasinghe adds that a 360 km railway line linking Colombo with Jaffna, Sri Lanka’s most northern point, has been repaired with volhelp from India, after being destroyed by the LTTE. The line will be officially re-opened by Sri Lanka’s President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, shortly.

“Today, because our Government does not have to face up to death and destruction caused by the terrorists, it has been able to focus on the future of our people, and to give a better life to everybody,” says Samarasinghe. “We have invested heavily in infrastructure, roads, railways, housing, health, education.

We have increased rural IT literacy from three per cent to 50 per cent country-wide – Sri Lanka is now ranked number one in the world in rural literacy. We have improved health, water, sanitation, agriculture, fisheries, unemployment has been brought down from 6.0 per cent to 4.4 per cent, inflation has been controlled, and our Government debt (as a percentage of GDP) has been brought down from 86.2 to 78.3. Tourism has increased by 30-40 per cent.”

Still at the core of Sri Lankan economic policy is a determination to capitalise on the country’s geographical location as a maritime hub, with port, airport and transport infrastructure continuing to be expanded.

“The President is continuing to focus on maritime, aviation, energy, education, agriculture and manufacturing to drive the economy,” says Samarasinghe. “Our exports and our services sector are improving.”

Samarasnghe also sees opportunities for Sri Lanka coming from the change of Government in India. “The new leader (Narendra Modi) is a market-orientated person who wishes to open the doors for investment and private-public sector partnerships,” he says.

“He is inclusive, and his opening of doors will help all of us in the region benefit from his attitude. Politically, he is not insensitive to Sri Lanka’s challenges.”

Among these challenges, Samarasinghe admits, is continuing lobbying by LTTE sympathisers among the Tamil diaspora, targetting a separate state in Sri Lanka. But the LTTE, he says, is losing ground in its propaganda war.

Samaasinghe was Commander of the Sri Lankan Navy before his current posting as High Commissioner to Canberra. He says: “They are organised, these overseas cells of LTTE, and they still influence separatist sympathisers in our Northern region. You cannot paint the LTTE other than as a terrorist organisation – they invented the suicide attack.

“The only way forward for them is to recognise that a separate state is not possible. They need to reconcile and get the benefits (of peace).”

He says certain countries are now confronting the same aspects of terror that Sri Lanka faced for 30 years. “The LTTE killed our third President, Ramasinghe Premadasa, in a suicide bombing in 1993, and India’s Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, also in a suicide bombing, in 1991, says Samarasinghe.

“They also killed seven of our Cabinet Ministers, 37 Members of our Parliament, 20,000 of our soldiers and thousands of innocent civilians. “They used child soldiers, they used 300,000 innocent civilians as human shields, they placed heavy artillery weapons among civilians in self-declared ‘no-fire’ zones and near hospitals.

“But even when we complained of LTTE sympathisers displaying the LTTE flag at money collection points, we were criticised, told that displaying the flag of a terrorist organisation was not an act of terror. 

“It seems very strange suddenly to see the entire world now saying exactly what Sri Lanka said 30 years ago – that you have to confront the terrorists, that you have to defend the sovereignty of your country.

“The brutality of killing is normal to terrorists, life has no value to terrorists. And here is the United Nations Human Rights Commission wanting to investigate Sri Lanka – because we defended our sovereignty.

“Unfortunately, the LTTE continues to use the UNHRC as a political tool, and we still get criticism from some countries because we defended our sovereignty. These countries really are guilty of double standards. The UN needs to support Sri Lanka in consolidating the current stability and in its progress on reconciliation and economic development.”

Samarasinghe says Australia and New Zealand were the first two major nations to openly accept that LTTE was a brutal terrorist organisation struggling for a separate state. He says many other countries were insensitive to the challenge faced by Sri Lanka. In this regard, Australia and New Zealand had stood firm on fairness and facts.

“The Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, has made the point that the most important human right is the right to live. The LTTE terrorists took that right away from many of our leaders, and tens of thousands of our people.

“What you see today is the rest of the world appearing to be taken by surprise by this same form of terrorism.”