Transport Sector Driving Economic Activity in Sri Lanka: Opportunities and Challenges

T. Lalithasiri Gunaruwan and D. Harshanee W. Jayasekera
Additional contact information
T. Lalithasiri Gunaruwan: T. Lalithasiri Gunaruwan, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Department of Economics, University of Colombo, Colombo 03, Sri Lanka. Email: tlgun@econ.cmb.ac.lk

South Asia Economic Journal, 2012, vol. 13, issue 2, 291-311

Abstract: An expectation to double the per capita income in five years through a sustained GDP growth rate of 9 per cent could only hold ground under very favourable economic conditions. On the one hand, this projected acceleration of economic activity, if practically realized, would demand a substantial amount of investment expenditure which could cause a widening of resource gap leading the economy into a debt trap. On the other hand, if the service sector including the transport sector could not augment to meet up the investments and expected output expansions, the targeted growth itself could be at risk. Neither scenario would be favourable. A way out of this apparent impasse is to increase investment productivity—by way of being observant in capital spending and improving the trickle-down effect of investment expenditure against mere capital accumulation.

Keywords: Transport; planning; public investment productivity; economic development; sustainability; Sri Lanka; E2; H54; L91; O18; Q56; R4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1391561412457279 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:soueco:v:13:y:2012:i:2:p:291-311

DOI: 10.1177/1391561412457279

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in South Asia Economic Journal from Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().