Statistics needed to understand severity of problems - minister

The Induction Ceremony of the Institute of Applied Statistics Sri Lanka was held recently at the Hector Kobbekaduwa Agrarian Research Institute, Colombo with the Water Supply and Drainage Minister Dinesh Gunawardena as the Chief Guest. Addressing the gathering the minister stated that Sri Lanka was able to maintain an over 6% GDP growth rate for last five years with two straight years above 8% and that it will continue to experience sturdy economic growth, despite a bad economic climate in the western world.

He stated that Sri Lanka is on track to meet most of the millennium development goals as revealed by the UNDP including those related to universal primary education and gender equality. The leadership of President Mahinda Rajapaksa brought lasting peace to the nation.

The minister further said, "Being a developing country we still suffer from a number of problems such as low productivity in agriculture coupled with rural poverty and regional disparity, malnutrition, youth unemployment, low returns on higher education, better usage of foreign remittances, energy and transportation. Even though some do not want to employ statistical analysts, we need statistics to understand the severity of problems. Politicians need professional support to identify and solve problems today".

Prof. L.A.P Guneratne, Chandrika Fernando, Prof. Athula Ranasinghe, Palitha Sarukkali and several other participated.