Sri Lanka’s Foreign Exchange Crisis: An Examination of Causality Dynamics, Shedding Light on Suggestive Way-Out Strategies

Abstract

The present research endeavoured to undertake a diagnostic analysis pertaining to the foreign exchange crisis faced by the Sri Lankan economy, intending to identify drivers of the crisis and to throw light on possible strategies to overcome the crisis. An extensive literature survey was conducted, followed by a descriptive analysis based on available data. Trend analysis, deploying graphical method, was adopted as the main analytical technique, and the results were interpreted using political economic reasoning. The outcomes of the study revealed that Sri Lanka has been experiencing persistent current account deficits as well as increasing foreign debt stock since 1977, the year in which economic liberalisation policies were implemented. In that respect, the Sri Lankan crisis closely resembled that of the Indian crisis more than those explained by the other crisis models found in literature. It could thus be inferred that the persistent trade and current account deficits owing to uncontrolled imports ever since liberalisation, and the resultant accumulation of foreign debt, have been the drivers of the foreign exchange crisis in Sri Lanka, while weak and undisciplined public finance policies, failure to move into high value-added and strategic industrialisation and wide income inequality would have been possible support factors. Therefore, the research outcomes yielded caution signals if policy makers consider availing further liberalisation of the economy as the remedial strategy to surmount the present crisis.