The location of Sri Lanka has a strategic significance and this has been proven by the historical trading activities between Sri Lanka and ancient China, Egypt, and the Roman Empire. There is ample evidence to show that Sri Lanka was a main trading hub in Asia. The reasons for occupation of Sri Lanka by the ...

Xinhua: Sri Lanka’s topmost Tamil minority minister in the northern town of Jaffna on is  confident that the government will be able to finalise a political solution for the Tamils. The minister of Traditional Industries and Small Enterprise Development, Douglas Devananda, told Xinhua in an interview that the solution should be based on 13 Amendment ...

A number of articles which appeared in print media in the recent past signify the volatility in the economy. High volatility leads to vulnerability. Volatility and vulnerability are reflections of the haphazard nature of the economic policies and poor economic governance in a country. What is volatility? Volatility is the severity and the frequency with ...

The first Prime Minister of independent India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, wrote 75 years ago: “It would be absurd to say that the profit motive does not appeal to the average Indian, but it is nevertheless true that there is no such admiration for it in India as there is in the west. The possessor of ...

2012 unlikely to match up to 2011 tea revenue; stakeholders’ voice uncertaintya By Cheranka Mendis The tea industry which brought in revenue of approximately US$ 675 million within the first six months of this year – US$ 50 million below the revenue collected in the same period in 2011 – is likely to fall short ...

Last week I had the opportunity of meeting Hermawan Kartajaya, one of the top 50 gurus who has shaped the world of marketing. His perspective to the changing landscape of marketing and what business must do sure opened my mind set to a new way of thinking business and Sri Lanka’s policy decision making. Hermawan ...

Disruption to food production, due to adverse weather conditions in USA, China, Russia and India could contribute to a spike in world food prices. Due to its direct exposure to global supply disruptions, Sri Lanka could be adversely affected, warns Sri Lankaandrsquo;s economic think tank andndash; Pathfinder andndash; in its latest andlsquo;economic flash.andrsquo;

The worst drought in the US in at least five decades has resulted in the loss of one-sixth of the expected corn crop. The UD Department of Agriculture (USDA) has estimated that corn farmers have been compelled to abandon fields greater in area than Belgium and Luxembourg combined, following the hottest July ever recorded in ...

Tea is our pride, for which we can be proud of for the reason that it is the best tea on the globe. It is the duty of every Sri Lankan, especially the diplomatic missions worldwide, to defend and promote our silver inherited as much as the beauty of Sri Lanka which is matchless. Sri ...

Playing off India against China and vice versa‘The Great Game’ was the name given to a diplomatic and military tussle between the British and Russian empires during the time of the British Raj in India for influence over what constitutes today’s central Asian states. Commonly known as the ‘Stan states,’ they were located along the ...

A farewell dinner was organised by the Sri Lanka-Russia Business Council of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce for Vladimir Mikhaylov and Madam Mikhaylov in recognition of the yeomen services rendered by Mikhaylov during his tenure as the Patron of the Council. The event was held on 6 July 2012 at the Dukes Court, Cinnamon Lakeside ...

Reuters: The International Monetary Fund on Thursday called for a “policy game changer” in the euro zone to arrest the spread of the debt crisis it now says is clearly engulfing the entire currency bloc and its smaller neighbors. An IMF spillover report that looks at how the economic policies of the so-called systemic five ...

Five teenage schoolchildren from Sri Lanka who had lost a family member to an act of terrorism attended this year’s ‘Project Common Bond’, a weeklong peace building and conflict resolution program held in the US. The program was organised by Tuesday’s Children, a New York based non-profit organisation serving the needs of those affected by ...

UNCTAD released its World Investment Report 2012 recently. The report indicated that for the first time since 2007, global FDI inflows increased by 16% despite the continuing effects of the global and financial economic crisis. However, UNCTAD predicts the FDI growth rates to decline in 2012 due to economic uncertainty and the possibility of lower ...

By Shamil Samsul Mueen 1. Introduction The global financial crisis has raised imperative issues concerning the stability and reliability of existing financial systems. This has driven an extensive global re-examination on the competence of the existing financial architecture and the search for a more enduring solution. As a result an increasing interest in Islamic finance ...

Four examples; two bad and two goodThe website of the London Economist newspaper has a reference to an official of a certain country referring to a journalist in words similar to what follows – I have substituted words which would be appropriate to an officer and a gentleman addressing a lady, for what was actually ...

By Cassandra Mascarenhas Setting its sights on placing Sri Lanka in the global economy and expanding its reach in overseas markets, the Sri Lanka Economic Summit 2012, the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce’s annual flagship event, aptly themed ‘Positioning Sri Lanka in the Global Economy,’ commenced last evening at the Cinnamon Grand. In the context of ...

The Oxford Dictionary tells us that being ‘happy’ is being cheerful with feelings of pleasure or satisfaction. ‘Satisfaction’ is, in turn, when you are pleased because you have achieved something or because something has happened as you wanted it to. A synonym is being ‘content’ – being happy and satisfied with what you have. Rulers ...

A document named ‘Growing Together’ prepared by UNESCAP for the sixty sixth session of ESCAP states that the realisation of what is termed as the ‘Asia Pacific century’ will depend on the region’s ability to harness the potential of regional economic integration. A shared history and culture, complementarities arising from their very different levels of ...

Ballooning trade gap Even with the multitude of measures taken to curb imports, Sri Lanka's cumulative trade deficit widened to nearly US$ 1.7 billion in the first two months of the year with earnings from exports increasing marginally by 3.3 per cent to US$ 1.8 billion whilst import expenditure shooting by 24.7 per cent to ...

After the LTTE was defeated, a campaign designed to promote Sri Lanka as a leisure and investment destination labelled ‘The Small Miracle’ was shot down, ostensibly on the ground that the miracle was in no way ‘small’. The marketing value in Sri Lanka’s compact size, our rich biodiversity, the diversity of leisure locations and physical ...

ww.wsws.org: On May 20, the Socialist Equality Party and International Student for Social Equality (ISSE) held a successful congress of plantation workers at Hatton, in Sri Lanka’s central hill region. A number of workers, including several dozen from the Nuwara Eliya and Badulla tea plantation districts, as well as youth and students from Jaffna, Kandy ...

News reports point to an important decision that the minister concerned has been requested to make on the above subject. If this is correct it is important that we recognise that it is more than a million dollar decision that has been called for. It is so important a decision because it could determine the ...