Sri Lanka Leads South Asia in Human and Economic Development
Since the end of the civil war in 2009, Sri Lanka has been booming even as the rest of South Asia region has lagged.
Sri Lanka's per capita income has quintupled over the last two decades from about $700 to $3500, significantly outperforming all other South Asian economies. During the same period, Pakistan's per capita GDP has increased from $500 to $1300 while India's is up from $400 to $1400.
In addition to its high per capita GDP for the South Asia region, Sri Lanka has also excelled on Human Development Index (HDI), a key indicator of social development assessed each year by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
Sri Lanka has the fastest growing economy with the highest social indicators in South Asia region. Its economy grew at 7.2% last year and it is expected to post 8% growth this year. With a literacy rate of 91% and life expectancy of 76 years, the UNDP ranks it among countries with high human development. It has achieved this progress in spite of a 26-year-long violent insurgency by the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) which it successfully ended in 2009.
By contrast, both India and Pakistan continue to lag Sri Lanka in terms of both economic and social indicators. India's economy has slowed in recent years. India's per capita GDP has shrunk in US dollar terms this year, significantly reducing the gap with Pakistan whose GDP has also seen slow growth since 2008. India suffers from low levels of human development with a rank of 136 among 187 countries. Pakistan ranks even lower at 146.
Pakistan's per capita GDP remained essentially flat in 1990s before doubling in years 2000-2008 on Musharraf's watch when Pakistan joined the ranks of middle income countries with per capita income of $1000 or more. Pakistanis have seen a very modest growth in their incomes since 2008.
While India's human development is still low, it has continued to make steady progress in the last two decades. Pakistan's human development progress briefly accelerated in years 2000-2007 on President Musharraf's watch. Pakistan's HDI grew an average rate of 2.7% per year under President Musharraf from 2000 to 2007, and then its pace slowed to 0.7% per year in 2008 to 2012 under elected politicians, according to the 2013 Human Development Report titled “The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World”. Going further back to the decade of 1990s when the civilian leadership of the country alternated between PML (N) and PPP, the increase in Pakistan's HDI was 9.3% from 1990 to 2000, less than half of the HDI gain of 18.9% on Musharraf's watch from 2000 to 2007.
There is much Pakistan can learn from Sri Lanka's record on human and economic development as well as fighting violent insurgencies. It is especially important today as its economy and education suffer in the midst of a growing Taliban violence that threatens the very existence of Pakistan.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Can Pakistan Learn From Sri Lanka to Defeat TTP?
South Asia Lags in UN MDG Goals
History of Human Development in Pakistan
Musharraf Accelerated Economic and Human Capital Growth in Pakistan
Politics of Patronage in Pakistan
Will "Last Chance" Talks With TTP Succeed?
 |
| Per Capita GDPs South Asia Region Source: Economist |
Sri Lanka's per capita income has quintupled over the last two decades from about $700 to $3500, significantly outperforming all other South Asian economies. During the same period, Pakistan's per capita GDP has increased from $500 to $1300 while India's is up from $400 to $1400.
In addition to its high per capita GDP for the South Asia region, Sri Lanka has also excelled on Human Development Index (HDI), a key indicator of social development assessed each year by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
 |
| Human Development Index in South Asia Source: UNDP |
By contrast, both India and Pakistan continue to lag Sri Lanka in terms of both economic and social indicators. India's economy has slowed in recent years. India's per capita GDP has shrunk in US dollar terms this year, significantly reducing the gap with Pakistan whose GDP has also seen slow growth since 2008. India suffers from low levels of human development with a rank of 136 among 187 countries. Pakistan ranks even lower at 146.
 |
| GDP Per Capita in US$ Source: World Bank |
While India's human development is still low, it has continued to make steady progress in the last two decades. Pakistan's human development progress briefly accelerated in years 2000-2007 on President Musharraf's watch. Pakistan's HDI grew an average rate of 2.7% per year under President Musharraf from 2000 to 2007, and then its pace slowed to 0.7% per year in 2008 to 2012 under elected politicians, according to the 2013 Human Development Report titled “The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World”. Going further back to the decade of 1990s when the civilian leadership of the country alternated between PML (N) and PPP, the increase in Pakistan's HDI was 9.3% from 1990 to 2000, less than half of the HDI gain of 18.9% on Musharraf's watch from 2000 to 2007.
There is much Pakistan can learn from Sri Lanka's record on human and economic development as well as fighting violent insurgencies. It is especially important today as its economy and education suffer in the midst of a growing Taliban violence that threatens the very existence of Pakistan.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Can Pakistan Learn From Sri Lanka to Defeat TTP?
South Asia Lags in UN MDG Goals
History of Human Development in Pakistan
Musharraf Accelerated Economic and Human Capital Growth in Pakistan
Politics of Patronage in Pakistan
Will "Last Chance" Talks With TTP Succeed?
Comments
Yet the shrinking in the dollar term is primarily because of major devaluation of the rupee over the last one year. From around the level of below 55, the rupee had a major fall to 68 to a dollar before having a substantial recovery to around 62 now. The considerable depreciation, which was predominantly because of a massive surge in Current Account Deficit (CAD), has to a certain extent arrested but other major concerns, which too have been responsible for the falling trust in rupee, do remain. Therefore apparently even though in rupee terms the Indian economy has gone up, it has not benefitted the economy and on the contrary, a falling value of rupee increases the cost of imports thereby increasing the cost of literally everything, which has a substantial import component, even when that product is manufactured in India. Such increase in costs, including that of the import bills of fuel and gold in addition to a host of other things, eventually result in inflation. While a certain proportion of the CAD was also due to incredibly high level of gold import, one cannot deny that policy paralysis, policy indecisiveness, lack of institutional clarity, issues of corruption, massive delays in clearance of projects and tax feud, each of these did play a role in making India's growth story a sad saga where even increase in the GDP in terms of rupee does not end up in helping the nation at large. Meanwhile efforts to contain inflation have always been with respect to tampering with the interest rate with the presumption that higher interest rate would induce more deposit and reduce expenditure thereby controlling inflation. For the last few years it has been proved that India's primary inflation is because of food prices and not because of organised industry. Therefore unless reforms are brought in the agriculture sector, India's issues of stubborn inflation will not go away. The supply side constraints created by inefficiencies in the supply chain of agricultural products with middlemen making huge profit at the cost of both the producer of agricultural products and end consumers, is hurting the economy a lot. In addition to this, the investment climate has to be improved with a clear cut policy directive. One has to give some credit to the Finance Ministry and RBI for containing the CAD and bringing it down to manageable levels, yet the problems of India will not be solved by that alone. If policy directives are one thing that is needed to be worked upon, the other key issue invariably is that of subsidy. India's gargantuan subsidies and populist policies, be it highly subsidized fuel oils, be it subsidy in fertilisers or be it the food security bill or employment guarantee scheme, each of these revenue expenditures essentially has become a drag on the economy with no sustainable asset development to compliment the money being spent.
Read more at: http://news.oneindia.in/feature/in-dollar-terms-has-the-indian-economy-grown-or-shrunk-1391642.html
KARACHI (AFP) - Pakistan recorded five per cent growth in the first quarter of the current fiscal year, the central bank said on Friday, beating its target and almost doubling the figure for the same period last year.
The State Bank of Pakistan's data for the early months of the financial year began in July 2013, said GDP grew by 5.0 per cent, compared with only 2.9 per cent in the first quarter of the last fiscal year.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan, plagued by a bloody, destabilising Islamist insurgency and chronic power shortages, has struggled to energise its economy in recent years.
Growth has bumped along well below the level experts say is needed to absorb new entrants to the workforce from Pakistan's growing, youthful population.
http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/money/story/pakistans-economy-crosses-targets-log-5-growth-first-quarter-20140228
India's economic growth rate slowed down in the most recent quarter, according to official figures.
The economy expanded at an annual rate of 4.7% in the three months to December, down from 4.8% in the previous quarter.
The figure was lower than analysts had been expecting.
Asia's third-largest economy has been weighed down by various factors, such as high inflation, a weak currency and a drop in foreign investment.
For the same period in 2012, annual GDP growth was 4.5%.
This is the fifth quarter in a row that India's annual growth rate has been below the 5% mark.
Manufacturing was hardest hit - falling by 1.9% compared with the previous year. The industry is considered one of the country's biggest job creators.
However, hotels, transport utilities and agriculture all showed substantial growth.
"We continue to expect India's economic recovery to remain slow and uneven. Local conditions remain challenging, which is critical as the economy is driven primarily by domestic demand," said Capital Economics economist Miguel Chanco.
Two years ago, India's growth rate stood at about 8%. Economists say the country needs to grow by that much in order to generate enough jobs for the 13 million people entering the workforce each year.
The BBC's Yogita Limaye in Mumbai says the numbers are not good news for the ruling Congress Party, which faces elections in May.
"These figures show that the slowdown really cemented itself in 2013. All four quarters showed growth below 5%," she said.
"One silver lining [for the government] is inflation. Prices had risen steeply in the beginning of the year but over the past two months they have come down."
More than half of the country's 1.2 billion people are under 25. Chand Pandey is one of them. He lost his job at a car parts firm recently and is struggling to find another one.
"Whichever company I go to, they say there's a slowdown and there's less production," he said.
"So they're not hiring any workers right now. It's been two or three months that I've been looking for a job, but I get the same answer everywhere."
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26385545
In his first comments after losing power in early January, Sri Lanka’s former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, has pinned the blame on India’s external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), for the situation in his country as well as in Pakistan. Rajapaksa was speaking to a journalist from the Pakistani daily, Dawn.
When the reporter told him that many Sri Lankans had mentioned how Pakistan helped in quelling the Tamil insurgency, and asked how this was the case, Rajapaksa said, “See the US, Europe, the west, they are not our friends. Pakistan helped us, especially Musharraf. What happened in my country and the insurgency in your country, RAW is behind it.”
Rajapaksa’s charge comes in the wake of a Reuters report in mid January, which said that a RAW official had been asked by the then Rajapaksa government to leave the country before the polls. This was in response to the perception of the old government that RAW had helped cobble up the opposition alliance, which eventually ousted Rajapaksa. The Ministry of External Affairs had rubbished the report, and said no movement of diplomatic personnel had taken place from the Indian embassy in Colombo before their scheduled tenure was over.
MEA did not respond to Rajapaksa’s charge immediately. But a serving intelligence official, speaking to HT, said, “Did we spawn terror in Pakistan? Did we alienate Tamils and Muslims and the Sinhalese opposition? It is easy to blame external actors when you are responsible for the internal mess.” He called it ‘cheap nationalist stunts’.
http://m.hindustantimes.com/india-news/rajapaksa-blames-raw-for-situation-in-sl-pak/article1-1322353.aspx
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- China’s ambassador to Sri Lanka said Monday it is considering a request for $2.5 billion in assistance to help the island nation through a debt and foreign currency crisis.
Qi Zhenhong told reporters that Beijing is studying the Sri Lankan government’s appeal for a $1 billion loan and $1.5 billion credit line.
Sri Lanka needs to make nearly $7 billion in payments on foreign loans this year, but Qi was non-committal about a request to restructure China’s loans to Sri Lanka.
“Our ultimate goal is to solve the problem, but there may be different ways to do so,” he said.
Sri Lanka’s foreign reserves are dwindling at a time when it faces huge debt obligations. The country’s struggle to pay for imports has caused shortages of medicine, fuel, milk powder, cooking gas and other essentials, with people waiting in long queues to get fuel.
Residents are enduring daily power cuts due to a shortage of fuel to operate the generating plants and dry weather has sapped hydropower capacity.
The Central Bank allowed the local currency to free float earlier this month, causing a sharp increase in prices.
Sri Lanka’s economy depends heavily on tourism and trade and the pandemic has been disastrous, with the government estimating a loss of $14 billion over the last two years. The economy is estimated to have contracted by 1.5 % in July- September 2021, according to the central bank.
Sri Lanka's foreign reserves are shrinking partly because of construction projects built with Chinese loans that are not making money. China loaned the country money to build a seaport and airport in the southern Hambantota district and a wide network of roads.
Central Bank figures show that current Chinese loans to Sri Lanka total around $3.38 billion, not including loans to state-owned businesses, which are accounted for separately and thought to be substantial.
Qi said that since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, China has provided $2.8b in financial help to Sri Lanka.
“Our aim is to help Sri Lanka to overcome the current difficulties,” he said.
Last week, neighboring India extended a $1 billion credit line to Sri Lanka to be used for importing food, medicines and other essentials from India.
The two Asian giants are vying for influence in the Indian Ocean and consider Sri Lanka strategically important.