Whose vanity, whose sanity?

The inability of our bureaucracy to cope with the modern world was graphically illustrated recently at the conference of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka, held at Waters Edge, Battaramulla.

Speaking on the theme ‘Sanity, vanity and reality’, retired Central Bank Assistant Governor Dr Anila Dias Bandaranaike waxed eloquent on what she considers to be the unreality of the expectations of the present government and its economic disorders.

Granted, her intentions were benign. But then, the way to hell is paved with such.

Her litany of trepidation includes grave doubt as to the government’s target of 2.5 million tourists by 2016. It is not exactly clear whether she thinks this goal cannot be achieved. All it takes, really, is a growth rate of about 25.5 percent per year from now until the target year.

Growth rate

Sri Lanka’s tourist arrivals, according to Tourist Board statistics, are rising at an average of 38 percent per year. Provided this growth rate is sustained, the number of tourists in 2016 will be not 2.5 million but 5.5 million.

Tourist arrivals on the rise

Dr Anila queries whether Sri Lanka could cope with 2.5 million tourists with a population of only 20 million, a ratio of 1 tourist for every 8 of the population. This is not in fact excessive.

Of the Asian countries, Thailand, with 70 million people, has 16 million tourists (1:4.4); Australia, with 22.5 million people, has 5.9 million (1:3.8). Malaysia, with a population 28 million, has 25 Million (1: 1.12); and Maldives, with 316,000 people has a whopping 790,000 (1:0.4).

Dr Anila argues that tripling the number of tourists will mean tripling the amount of resources to support them, implying that this cannot be done. A hotel room, she says costs a million rupees. It does, if it is in a four-star hotel.

Tourist accommodation

In most advanced countries, ‘graded’ hotels account for only one segment of the tourist accommodation. A huge number of rooms exist in bed-and-breakfasts, guest houses, inns, pensions and pubs as well as in youth hostels, backpackers’ hostels and temporary hostels.

In 2010, foreign tourists in Sri Lanka spent 3.23 million nights (60 percent) in rooms in star-class hotels; a further 0.89 million nights (17 percent) in unclassified hotels; and 1.25 million nights (23 percent) in supplementary establishments.

If there is insufficient investment in new star-class hotels, the slack can be taken up by the informal sector. This happened before, when the shortage of hotel rooms in the unplanned post-1977 period caused the mushrooming of guest houses and bed-only accommodation.

Arrivals are constrained by the room shortage, so that maximum growth is actually in the off-season. For example, average growth in December has been 32 percent, compared to 56 percent in April and 40 percent in May. The room occupancy is evening out between season and off-season, meaning fewer hotel rooms (and other resources) required.

Impact on traffic

Dr Anila says the number of tourist coaches will increase and clog the roads. The peak number of tourist days occurs in December, which for the 2.5 million target means about 400,000 tourists. Assuming the tourists travel every day, this works out at about 3,500 tourist buses.

At present there are about 25,000 private buses and 5,000 CTB buses. The additional tourist coaches would mean a mere 10 percent increase on this figure, less than the probable increase in the regular bus population.

Since, unlike regular buses, they do not need to pick up passengers along the road, their impact on traffic will certainly not be colossal.

This impact may be expected to be further reduced when Mattala airport comes into operation. It will shift tourist traffic away from Colombo towards its natural centre of gravity in the South of the country. Needless to say, Dr Anila questions the necessity for the new airport.

International flights

There are manifold reasons for a second airport, the major consideration being that, as the closest suitable airport is at Trivandrum, international flights to Colombo have to a carry an additional fuel load in case of an emergency. This adds to the cost of each ticket.

A further airport is also required in case of a catastrophe, either natural or man-made.

This was demonstrated during the attack by terrorists on Bandaranaike International Airport in 2001, causing tourism to drop by 16 percent and contributing to slowing down the economy by 1.4 percent.

A second International airport was proposed by President Premadasa at Hingurakgoda (whence flew the 'Kangaroo Hop' flights to Perth during the Second World War). Later it was proposed that Koggala airport (once the origin of the 'double sunrise' flights by Catalina flying boats to Perth) should be expanded, but this project was cancelled for environmental reasons.

Dr Anila is concerned about the imbalance in the economy between the Western Province and the rest of the country. The location of the airport at Mattala should contribute to the development of its hinterland in the poorest area in the island, Moneragala district, as well as to Hambantota and Matara.

Considerations of space constrain one from devoting more to addressing the arguments of Dr Anila. The point being made here is not that her judgement is muddled; but that her 'can't be done' approach is one typical of the thinking of the bureaucracy, in which it is entrenched.

The vanity and insanity is in this negativity, in the outlook which seeks merely to find fault our development efforts, not solutions for their defects. What is required from our officialdom is a gung ho 'can do' attitude. Guidance is called for on how things can be done, not why they cannot be done.

In a science fiction story of the 1950s, the US government fakes a personal anti-gravity pack, which causes scientists to rethink the limitations of the accepted wisdom and modify their own thought processes, leading to the invention of a rudimentary levitation device.

We need a similar boundary-breaker. The bureaucracy needs to see past the current, often unnoticed, assumptions; to exercise lateral, creative thinking, rejecting the accepted paradigm in order to come up with new ideas.