Agriculture base saved Lanka

Hiran H. Senewiratne

Sri Lankan economy is resilient to the global financial recession due to the strong agricultural base in the country, Associate Professor and Director, International University of Japan Prof N.S.Cooray said.

“The government’s prime task is to give due recognition for the agricultural sector to be self-sufficient in certain agricultural products including rice, dairy and fishing like Japan” Prof. Cooray told the Daily News Business.

He said the Government’s new concept Api Wavamu and Rata Hadamu is an excellent move to give due recognition for country’s agriculture sector. This would enable Sri Lanka to face any external/internal impacts like the current global financial crisis in the future.

Cooray said North American countries, European Union countries and Japan were affected from the global financial crisis as those countries were depending heavily on the import and export sectors.

“In developed countries the service sector is large and the impact of the global crisis mainly depends on the nature of the economy. But the Sri Lankan economy is resilient despite being a big service sector because we have a strong agricultural base”, he said.

“Fortunately Sri Lanka is not depending much on the export/imports sector. This has resulted in it to be resilient to the current global recession due to the considerable agricultural presence in the country”, he said.

“Countries that are affected from the global recession depend on import and exports and those countries are highly vulnerable to global recessions, Prof Cooray said.

He said Sri Lanka made a policy mistake in 1977 by opening the economy and created a lot of problems for the country.

“But India liberalised the economy by protecting local industries especially the agriculture sector in the country,” he said.