A Case for Trade and Economic Development at Inreach Global

Sri Lanka faces multiple challenges to promoting social and human development. An urgent and concerted set of steps is required to inform the development policy discourse in a number of critical areas that are impacting Sri Lanka’s growth trajectory—the lingering challenges of the COVID 19 health and economic crisis, environment and climate change, connectivity, and migration between rural and urban areas, persistent poverty despite gains in GDP per capita, the impact of technological change on skills and job markets, and shifts in domestic and external market opportunities. These issues need to be addressed for the Government to realize its development vision articulated in its “Vistas for Prosperity”.

For the successful completion of this transformation, today’s business-as-usual scenario is no longer an option. There is a growing need to understand and leverage the interaction between economic/market incentives and these challenges to promote broad-based inclusive growth in the economic growth sphere. For example, it explores how GSL policies impact market systems, behaviors, and opportunities for disadvantaged groups and integrate rural populations into national, regional, and international markets.

To evolve innovative growth approaches under the ‘new normal, there is a need for dialogue and partnerships between academia (including non-resident), the Government, businesses, and civil society, to chart a path that takes the economic and welfare interests of each of these constituencies. There, it is proposed a new Trade and Development Practice be established at InreachGlobal. The Practice will be headed by Dr. Nihal Pitigala (and an Honorary Fellow), a former advisor to the Government, a long-time World Bank consultant with an established reputation for frontier economic analysis and policy advice across 27 countries in Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East. The Practice is supported by an international network of academics researchers and practitioners to create a new generation knowledge hub that attracts some of the best minds in the development sphere. The Practice will actively seek collaboration with other think tanks, former heads of state and government ministers, and private sectors, such as commerce, industry, and finance CEOs who, independent of financial interests, are willing to place their collective knowledge, expertise, experience, and reputation at this critical period in Sri Lanka’s development discourse. The members of the Practice and its partners will become—both individually and collectively—ambassadors of this partnership and a new paradigm for sustainable development grounded in pragmatic economic development narratives.