Knowledge Economy Index:

Sri Lanka 82 out of 140 countries - WB Country Director

Gayan KANCHANA

Sri Lanka’s future in the global knowledge economy of the twenty-first century depends critically on the country’s intellectual and human capital.

Sri Lanka has been ranked 82 out of 140 countries on the Knowledge Economy Index (KEI), said Country Director, World Bank for Sri Lanka and the Maldives Naoko Ishii.

She was speaking on ‘Innovations in Education’ at a seminar on Wednesday at the Galle Face hotel.

The Country Director said, “Sri Lanka has also been ranked 77 out of 134 countries on the Global Competitive Index. To ascend to the level of a prosperous Middle Income Country (MIC), the country needs research and innovation capacity to promote dynamic economic development.

The ability of people to think and act creatively, work industriously and productively innovate and adopt technologies to strengthen economic activities is cardinally important to achieve this objective. In this context, Sri Lanka needs a higher education system that can produce skilled, hard-working and enterprising graduates,” she said.

The Country Director said that Sri Lanka is poised on the crest of two great waves of opportunity. The first wave can transform the nation from a low income country to middle-income country. The second wave can transform the nation from a country in conflict to a country at peace.

The higher education sector must lead Sri Lanka successfully over the crests of the two waves of golden opportunities and also Sri Lanka’s higher education system should inspire the country’s value, ethics and social institutions so that Sri Lanka becomes a peaceful multi ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural society, she said.

Director, Bilingual Education, National Institute of Education Ashoka Hewaga said, “Bilingual education is a form of education in which information is presented to the students in two (or more) languages. Technically, we can refer any educational system that utilizes more than one language as bilingual. This project on Bilingual Education is totally funded by the World Bank.

Through Bilingual Education we expect to increase the English knowledge of all students in the country and Tamil for Sinhala students and Sinhala for Tamil students,” she said.