Driving the pulse of the economy or the dilution effect: Inflation impacting economic growth

Abstract

Economic growth becomes a critical component in the development of every country since it enhances living standards and other related concerns while eliminating poverty. As a developing country, Sri Lanka must place more emphasis to achieve sustainable economic growth. In addition, various factors have positive and negative impacts on economy’s growth. As such, the specific goals of any economy are to sustain long-term economic growth and low inflation. As a result, generally, high inflation is destructive for an economy and low inflation is beneficial. Therefore, it is worth investigating the impact of inflation on economic growth concerning a stable inflation level. This study examines the impact of inflation on economic growth in Sri Lanka by employing the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag model as the estimation technique. Furthermore, the findings illustrate a negative relationship between inflation and economic growth in the short run; when inflation increases by 1%, economic growth decreases by United States Dollar (USD) 3,427.94 million and long run economic growth declines by 107,263.8 million USD. Subsequently, with the current economic reality of Sri Lanka, the macroeconomic policies should be adaptable to maintain the stability of the inflation rate for a sustainable economy.