Making Sense of Economic Policies

This book is based on weekly commentaries on economic issues published in a Sunday newspaper for about 10 months from the last week of May 2005 to March 2006. Most of these commentaries were written under the pen-name Economist by the author of this volume. The book covers an important period where a number of domestic and global events influenced the economy of Sri Lanka at regular intervals—a crisis in the electric power sector, the international oil price hike, GSP-Plus scheme coming into operation, operationalization of the Pakistan-Sri Lanka Bilateral Free Trade Agreement, steps to operationalize SAFTA, WTO debates before the Hong Kong Summit and the aftermath, growth of the Business Process Outsourc-ing industry, etc. The period under consideration also saw increasing inflow of aid, economic policy discussions and debates before the Presidential Election.