The politics of growth

Review of Sustaining transformative growth in Sri Lanka 2025-2030. ODI Global. 2025. 54 pages. Available for download online.

- BY UDITHA DEVAPRIYA

The big question facing Sri Lanka today is not how growth can be sustained; it's whether it can be sustained at all. By growth here I mean the kind that can readily transform the economy, not the sort that helps us to hang on until the next crisis. This week marks two years since Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned as president, and two years since the start of perhaps the most painful round of austerity and economic reforms in post-independence Sri Lanka. What are the mistakes that were made, the lessons learnt? How do we take them forward? More crucially, will political officials take them forward?

Sustaining transformative growth in Sri Lanka 2025-2030, published "under the auspices" of ODI Global (UK) and the Centre for Poverty Analysis (Sri Lanka), combines in one slim volume the prescriptions of nine policymakers who try to answer these questions. Not all of them are economists, but most are. All but one are Sri Lankans, though not all of them are living here. They include Sirimal Abeyratne, Indrajit Coomaswamy, and Ganeshan Wignaraja, who work today at the intersection of policy and academia.

It's that combination of policy and academic research which comes out in what these nine authors have to say, and though one may not agree with their prescriptions, they are there for all to see, and they can serve as a blueprint for the future.