Srilanka, Oct. 2 -- "The best way to predict the future is to create it." - Peter Drucker

By Prof. Asoka S.Seneviratne

Introduction

Sri Lanka has never been without industrial policy.

For decades, successive governments have attempted, in different forms, to promote manufacturing, protect domestic industries, attract foreign investment, develop exports, create employment and move the economy towards higher value-added production. Yet the country has struggled to transform these individual initiatives into a sustained process of industrial upgrading.

This raises a fundamental question: why has Sri Lanka found it so difficult to convert industrial policy into industrial transformation?

A recent International Monetary Fund working pa...