Post war development in agriculture sector in Ampara district

Agriculture sector plays key role to the development of a country. This sector contributes 12 per cent to GDP in Sri Lanka. Ampara district is situated in coastal region of eastern province in Sri Lanka. This district is predominately agriculture with considerable portion industries. The share of agricultural land accounts for 30.37 per cent of the total land area in the district. However, half of agricultural land is used for paddy cultivation and 70 per cent of the total population depends on this sector for their livelihoods in Ampara district. Since this district was severely affected by ethnic war period, agricultural land was not completely utilized for agricultural production. Thereby, total production and productivity especially in paddy sector were affected during ethnic conflict This study is an attempt to analyze the post war development in agriculture in the district of Ampara. This is a descriptive analysis with the use of primary and secondary data sources. Primary data collected from farmers in the district. Secondary data was collected from Agrarian Service Cantres (ASC) in Amparar district and Planning secretariat division, Government Agent office (Kacheri), Ampara. Finding shows that there was an improvement in total agricultural production and extent of cultivation in the post war scenario in Ampara district. Especially extent of paddy cultivation and production significantly increased. Finding further shows that the social relationship between multi ethnic groups of fanners has also improved

Post war economic development: a case study of ampara district in the eastern province of Sri Lanka

Eastern province is located in the east part of coastal region of Sri Lanka. It is one o f the richest provinces in terms of hs resources during pre-war situation. Eastern province is included three districts as Batticaloa, Ampara and Trincomalee and it has an area of 9950 km2 with a 2010 population of 1,561,000. This province contributes IS per cent and 7.5 per cent of total area and total population of Sri Lanka, respectively. GDP contribution of eastern province is 6 per cent to the national level in 2010 (Central Bank, 2011). Ampara is one of the three districts of the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka. Ampara district, until 1961, was the south eastern part of Batticaloa district. Then, in 1961, Ampara was carved out as a separate district. Ampara District has an area of 4431.4 km2 with a 2010 population of 668,170 consisting of the Sinhala, Muslim and Tamil communities. These ethnic communities are living in the district with ethnic ratios of 42.53 per cent Muslim, 38.88 per cent Sinhala, 18.39 per cent Tamils and 0.20 per cent others. The main livelihood opportunity of the people in the district is agriculture, especially paddy cultivation. As Ampara district is situated in the dry zone of the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka, the conditions of climate are varied on the basis of their physical aspects. The mean temperature in the district was 28.3° C in 2010. Rainfall is the main source of water available in the district of Ampara, with an average of 1600 m.m-2500m.m rainfall in a year. (Planning Secretariat, Ampara, 2010)

Gender imbalances in university admission in Sri Lanka

Liberalization policy has been associated with rising female labour force participation in Sri Lanka. Despite the suggestive government of Sri Lanka from independence has been giving higher priority for education, there could be seen gender imbalances in university entrance. This study is an attempt to analyze the gender development in university education and to find the gap in gender in the university admission in different fields in Sri Lanka. This is an analysis with the use of secondary data sources collected from Department of Census and Statistics, Central Hank of Sri Lanka and University Grant Commission. Finding shows that the qualified students' numbers for university education has been increasing year by year. As the eligible number of female students for University education is larger than male students, university enrolment of female has significantly increased from academic year 1942 to date in Sri Lanka. The finding further shows that the percentage share offemale entrance to the total number of qualified female students is higher than male students only for arts course. However, the percentage share offemale admission to the total number of eligible female students is lower than the male admission for commerce and science fields. Thus, female students' entrance is higher for arts course and lesser for commerce and science courses when compared to male students

Interlocking factor market in agrarian economy of Sri Lanka

Informal credit market plays a crucial role in the rural sector in developing countries. Prices of goods and services, in general, in the competitive markets are determined by the market forces but, prices of factors of production in agrarian economy are interlinked, thus reward of land, labour and credit also are determined by the interlockers.. An interlinked transaction is one in which the parties trade in at least two markets on the condition that the terms of all trade between them are jointly determined (Bell and Srinivasan, 1989). Agriculture sector is the foremost economic activity in Sri Lanka. Nearly 70 percent of total population living in rural areas depends completely or partially on agriculture sector. The main objective of the study is to examine the incidence of different types of linkages prevalent in the developed and backward villages among paddy farming households in Sammanthurai Divisional Secretariat area of Ampara district in Sri Lanka. This study is based on primary data and the data related to the year 2011-2012 (2011 Yala and 2011-2012 Maha). According to the results 95 per cent of the households in backward villages and 65 per cent of households in developed villages are involved in interlinked credit transactions, Hence, the result exhibits that interlinked credit transaction is higher in backward villages than that of developed villages. The results further reveal that Cash-to-Labour and Kind-to-Labour transactions in developed villages are allowed free of charge. Kind-Cash and Input-to-Output transactions are completely seen in the backward villages. Input-to-Output market link which is foremost in the backward villages and it is found to be exploitative to the paddy farmers

The relationship between money stock and economic growth of Sri Lanka: an aeg testing approach

In modern economy, money stocky is identified as a mechanism of economic growth of all nations. The purpose of this study was to test the relationship among the money stocky and economic growth of Sri Lanka. The time series data of the gross domestic product and the money stockused in this study were collected from the sample period from 1959 to 2013. The Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) and Philips Perron tests were used to test the stationarity of the time series variables, and then the Augmented Engel – Granger (AEG) testing approach was employed to test the relationship between the variables. Based on the Augmented Engel – Granger (AEG) testingresults, this study found that the money stock was positively impacting on economic growth of Sri Lanka. The partial p – Value of the money stock was less than 1% and the value of R- squared of this testing model was 0.85, which was higher than Durbin Watson statistic. In the meantime, the absolute value of the Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) test of the residual of the estimated model was stationary at 5% critical value. So, the conclusion was that the money stock and economic growth of Sri Lanka were maintained the relationship between them at I(0) level form

Study on tourism industry and infrastructure development in the post-war peace-building initiatives in Ampara district

In a post-war country, tourism has the potential to not only contribute to economic growth and physical reconstruction, but also to sustainable development, affirmative action and the protection of vulnerable groups to promote their livelihood. Although, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LITE) frightened the Government of Sri Lanka with their demand for a separate home land in the Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka, they were militarily defeated in the east of the country in July 2007. The Eastern Province comprised of Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Ampara Districts (Eastern Revival: http://www.neweast.lk). This study covers the Ampara district which is the Southern Part of the Eastern Province. This is one of the attractive places for tourism in the Island. The tourism industry of the region has been greatly affected by the civil war and also by the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami Disaster. These tragic disasters contributed to insecurity, and, the loss of natural as well as man-made resources such as infrastructure, disruption of service and loss of livelihood. However, the perception of the insecurity since the civil war has been a strong deterrent for local and foreign tourists. Nevertheless, Total tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka were 494,000 and it brought Rs.42, 571mn to this sector in 2007. This is 1.9 percent to the GDP and 3.19 percent to the service sector in the same year. This study is an attempt to analyze how tourism industry fosters the ongoing post-war peace-building process in the region and to identify how and to what extend tourism activities and improvement of infrastructure facilities contribute in the socio-economic foundation of the district in the basis of peace-building. This is a descriptive analysis with the use of primary and secondary data sources. Primary data collected from hotel and restaurant owners, public in Potuvil, Arugambay and other parts of the district Secondary data is collected from Divisional Secretaries, planning division of district secretariat, and District Secretariat Office (Kacheri), Ampara. The Finding shows that die arrival of local and foreign tourists have significantly increased in this district This situation also leads to develop infrastructure such as road, hotel and other facilities. According to the findings, the tourism development of this district paves the way to the peace building and development not only in this district but also in the Island

Inflation and economic growth in Sri Lanka: an ARDL bound testing approach

Nowadays, number of researchers empirically confirmed that the inflation and economic growth equally move together in negative liaison. But, in Sri Lankan context, this relationship was inferentially not proofed. Therefore, this study was empirically going to test this relationship. The objective of this study was to test the long run nexus between the inflation and economic growth in Sri Lanka. To test this objective, this study used the annual time series data during the periods of 1970 to 2014. And, the multiple regressions model was employed with support of the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique which was newly introduced by Pesaran et al., (2001). In this study, the economic growth was used as dependent variable and the inflation rate, exchange rate, and money supply were considered as independent variables. In these independent variables, the inflation rate was considered as key variable and others were exercised as control variables. Based on the ARDL technique, this study selected the lag- 2 model for interpreting the findings which was selected by Akaike Info Criterion (AIC) and Schwarz Bayesian Criterion (SBC). Furthermore, this study fitted a long run nexus model using ordinary least square method with support of ARDL technique. Based on this model, this study confirmed that both the inflation and the economic growth maintain the long run nexus between them with appearing of negative sign. Therefore, this study recommends that, when the development policy makers frame the development policy they should consider this nexus

Impact of fiscal deficit on inflation in Sri Lanka: an econometric time series analysis

There is a relationship between the fiscal deficit and inflation, which was confirmed empirically in several studies conducted in many countries. Sri Lanka has been encountering the problem of inflation for the recent years. But in Sri Lanka, this proposition has not yet been studied scientifically. Therefore, this study was going to fill this gap. The objective of this study was to test the impact of fiscal deficit on inflation in Sri Lanka. For this study, the annual time series data were used during the period of 1959 to 2013. The fiscal deficit, exchange rate, government expenditures and import outflow were used as independent variables while the Colombo consumer price index was considered as dependent variable. In addition, the multiple regressions model was used to test the impact of fiscal deficit on inflation. Based on the regression results, the fiscal deficit preserved the positive relationship with inflation in Sri Lanka at one percent significant level. Therefore, this study confirmed that the fiscal deficit accelerates the inflation in Sri Lanka