Sri Lanka ranks among the top 5 emerging countries with a sound business climate – growing economy, improving service sectors and high human development

The geographic location of Sri Lanka has opened many doors for Sri Lanka to connect with the rest of South Asia, Far East and the Pacific with Europe and the Americas. With a middle-income emerging market status, Sri Lanka has positioned itself as an economic hub for the region by taking the location as a competitive advantage to compete with highly successful hubs of Hong Kong and Singapore.

Sri Lanka’s economy has been growing steadily in the recent years, which reached USD 67.2 billion in 2013, a growth of 7.3% over 2012. Our service sector had a significant improvement recording 6.4% growth in comparison to the 4.6% the previous year with a boost from the infrastructure developments and other required policies and assistance from the government.

Sri Lanka has posted the fastest growth rate in South Asia in the past three years whilst managing 4.7 per cent inflation and 4.5 per cent unemployment. The economists have projected the country’s growth for next three years to remain high at 7.5 per cent. Another promising factor is the raising global prosperity index and the human development index. Sri Lanka is ranked highest in South Asia in both these indexes.

Sri Lanka is leading on the GDP growth in South Asian economies. Sri Lanka has recorded a GDP growth of 7.3 per cent while Afghanistan 2.8 per cent, Bangladesh 5.8 per cent, India 3.8 per cent, Nepal 3.8 per cent and Pakistan 3.8 per cent. 

Although there is a considerable graduate employability rate across South Asia, approximately 50% of the students who have finished higher education are trained in technical and business disciplines in Sri Lanka. English is widely spoken in urban cities and is commonly used for education, business and commercial purposes.

With the ADB projections of the adult population in 2036, the industry sectors and higher education sectors in Sri Lanka are focusing on increasing productivity and education levels to meet the future needs. Booming IT and tourism industry are adding pressure for the Higher education sector to prepare graduate with more specialised skills. In comparison to the other South Asian countries, Sri Lanka boasts more people with UK-recognized accounting qualifications than any country outside the UK, with similar emphasis on other professional qualifications such as medicine, law, engineering, architecture, etc. But the country has the potential to develop distinctive remote service offerings in these areas through transnational education.

Other niche capabilities include open source, cloud apps and mobile technologies. The telecommunication industry in Sri Lanka is well geared to create an appetite for these with a 2.8 Million internet users that has a rapid growth.