A stark new economic assessment reveals that nearly 25 percent of Sri Lanka’s population is living in poverty, prompting urgent calls for deep structural reforms and a coordinated national recovery plan.
Dr. Ganeshan Vignarajah, Senior Fellow at ODI Global, said surveys conducted by the Poverty Analysis Center show that almost a quarter of Sri Lanka’s population is living in poverty. Speaking at the launch of the report on Sri Lanka’s Transformative Economic Growth 2025-2030, he stressed that comprehensive reforms across multiple sectors are essential to address the deepening poverty crisis.
The report titled “Sri Lanka’s Transformative Economic Growth 2025-2030” was prepared by an independent research team under the Poverty Analysis Center and ODI Global and was launched recently at the Colombo Foundation Institute. It outlines a policy framework centered on structural reforms, inclusive growth, and poverty reduction as key pillars of Sri Lanka’s post-crisis economic recovery.
Former Senior Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Yvette Fernando, also addressed the event, highlighting long-standing gaps in national coordination. She said, “But we have not been able to create such a situation in our country. That’s why I think that with the government’s intervention and the private sector’s involvement, a national plan like that is now being implemented by each group in different places. Many good things are happening. But if we bring it to a centralized place and organize it in a way that we can control it well and follow up on it, we can get better results. That’s what the government should do, and we have proposed something like that here, by setting up two committees and a commission for that action plan.”
The report emphasizes that without a unified national strategy, Sri Lanka risks missing a critical opportunity to translate recovery efforts into lasting economic stability and poverty reduction.
