Brief description about Sri lanka ( After the 30 years war )

A long-awaited deal between Sri Lanka's government and the rebel Tamil Tigers (LTTE) was concluded in early 2002. However, fighting became much more serious in 2006. Much of the country became no-go areas for tourists. The most serious fighting was in the northeast part of the country where the Tamil people were in majority. There were isolated attacks, however, throughout the rest of the country, notably in Colombo with a suicide bomb and in Yala National Park.

In 2009, the government, which had escalated their offensive, announced that the leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakran, had been killed during a gun battle. It ended 26 years of fighting with the LTTE – time will tell whether the LTTE has finally stopped fighting. Immediately after the war was declared over by the government, it set up camps for 250,000 displaced Tamils. However, these camps were condemned by some human rights organisations because it is alleged they were used to find rebels, and then execute them.

In January 2010, Mahinda Rajapaksa won a landslide election against former army chief General Sarath Foneska who led the final attack on the LTTE.

In August 2010, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office removed the final travel restrictions across all of the country. It has effectively allowed tourists (who previously wouldn’t have been able to get insured) to tour the entire country for the first time since the 1990s. In 2009, the Sri Lankan stock market was one of the best performing in the world.

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka says that Sri Lanka has been successful in recording the highest economic growth rate since the independence. A special feature has been that Sri Lankan economy growing at the rate of eight percent or more continuously for two years for the first time. The Bank further says the main economic achievement is the value of the gross national product becoming equivalent to 6,543 billion rupees. The industrial and service sectors have extended the highest contributions amounting to 10.3 and 1.8 percent respectively for the economic growth in the year 2011. The contributions of the agricultural sector have been at 1.5 percent.

The per capita income has increased to 2,836 American dollars. This figure stood at 2,400 American dollars the year before the last. The investments which remained at 27.6 percent in the year 2010, have increased to 29.9 percent in 2011. The Central Bank further points out that the unemployment which stood at 4.9 percent in 2010 has reduced to 4.2 percent in 2011. The number of unemployed persons has reduced to 340,000. 

The arrival of tourists has also increased by 31 percent last year. The earnings in the tourism sector have also increased by 44 percent. The government’s revenue has gone up by 14.4 percent in 2011. The figure amounted to 935 billion rupees. The government expenditure has been reduced to 21.4 percent. The substantial reduction of the recurrent expenditures as well as deployment of government capital for infrastructure projects have pave the way for this situation. Another special achievement has been to maintain inflation on a single digit for the past three years.