Sri Lanka Economy & Politics

Any discourse on Sri Lanka economy and politics makes an interesting study. From the point of view of economy, Sri Lanka is enjoying strong rates of growth for the last couple of years. From 1977 onwards, Singapore has been gradually shifting from the socialist social and political structure and has opened up its economy to international competition. Deregulation and privatization of the economy has made it go forward through leaps and bounds. Though there were some periods of instability because of the internal civil war and uprisings of the leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, Sri Lanka has left those days firmly behind and surging forward with renewed vigor. From the year of its independence, that is, from 1948 Sri Lankan economy has been growing steadily but in 2001, there was a negative GDP growth at 1.4%. Some of the main reasons were internal economic problems as well as the terrorist onslaughts in Sri Lanka and America.
If we go through Sri Lanka economy and politics, we find that the main import commodities are textile fabrics, mineral products, petroleum, food stuffs, machineries and transportation equipment. The main export commodities of this country are textile and apparels, tea, spices, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, coconut products, rubber and fish. Main industries in Sri Lanka are coconut and other agricultural commodities, rubber processing, tea, telecommunications, banking, insurance, clothing, cement, petroleum refining, tobacco and textiles.

The two major parties of Sri Lanka are United National Party and Sri Lanka Freedom Party. Both the parties favor values of democracy, international nonalignment and enhancement and encouragement of Sinhalese culture. Very broadly speaking Sri Lanka Freedom Party favors a much broader role for the state and United National Party favors capitalistic state. Multi party democracy in Sri Lanka is working well in spite of high levels of domestic violence specially during 1977 to 1993. The President of the country is elected for six years and is the head of the state and government as well as the commander in chief of the armed forces. Sri Lanka has contingent vote. The Prime Minister can be termed as the deputy of the President.