Nearly 25 percent of Sri Lanka’s population is currently living in poverty, according to surveys highlighted in a new report released by the Poverty Analysis Center in collaboration with ODI Global. Experts at the launch emphasized the urgent need for economic reforms to address entrenched inequalities and ensure sustainable growth.
The report, titled “Sustaining Sri Lanka’s Transformative Economic Growth 2025-2030,” was unveiled at the Colombo Foundation Institute and provides a policy framework aimed at structural reforms and poverty reduction in the country’s post-crisis recovery phase. Ganeshan Vignarajah, Senior Fellow at ODI Global, stressed that Sri Lanka must undertake broad reforms across multiple sectors of the economy to tackle poverty effectively.
“The surveys conducted by the Poverty Analysis Center show that nearly one in four Sri Lankans is living in poverty,” Vignarajah said, calling for coordinated action between the government and private sector to implement sustainable solutions.
Yvette Fernando, former Senior Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, highlighted the importance of centralizing and organizing ongoing initiatives to maximize their impact. “Many good things are happening across the country, but if we bring these efforts together in a centralized framework, we can control and follow them up better and achieve stronger results,” Fernando said. She added that the report proposes the creation of two committees and a commission to oversee the national action plan for economic reform and poverty alleviation.
The report’s release comes as Sri Lanka seeks to recover from a prolonged economic crisis that has exacerbated social inequalities and weakened public confidence in governance. Analysts say that without systematic reforms, the country risks stagnating despite pockets of economic progress.
