Economic and Social Costs of Corruption: Can Sri Lanka Survive Without Eliminating Corruption?

By

Dr. H. M. Gunatilake

1. Introduction

Corruption is a critical development issue that has been discussed widely during the last two to three decades. While there was denial from accused parties, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) governance diagnostic report provided convincing evidence of widespread corruption in Sri Lanka. It acknowledges that “governance and corruption issues have imperiled national and social well-being”.  The political change in 2015 was heavily influenced by the anti-corruption sentiments and promises on good governance. The government came into power in 2015 not only miserably fail to take actions against corruption, but also was accused with massive corruption scandals such as Central Bank bond scam.  The public overwhelmingly voted for the same leaders who were accused of massive appropriation of wealth through corrupt means in 2015 election campaign. A corruption free just society was one of the prominent demands of “Aragalaya”, which only changed the outer appearance of the government. The infamous Adani deal on wind power is a case in point, amongst many such allegations against the current government,  which shows that corruption continues despite popular outcry to curb it. The nation is about to  face a  the presidential election and understanding why Sri Lanka cannot progress in development without minimizing corruption is vital at this critical moment of the post independent history of Sri Lanka. This paper describes the economic and social costs of corruption.

2. What is Corruption?

Amongst many definitions, one simple way to define corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for private gains by political leaders, or public officials. It is a form of dishonesty or criminal activity undertaken by a person or organization to acquire illicit benefits. Forms of corruption vary, but include bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, parochialism, patronage, influence peddling, graft, and embezzlement. Corruption occurs in both the public and private sectors.  Media personnel and civil society actors can also be involved in corruption.  Actors can be  individuals, companies, or organizations such as a political party.

Sometimes the ‘advantage’ gained through corruption may not be ‘undue’ or clear-cut, but is nonetheless an advantage. For example, in some highly corrupt societies people can only secure access to public health or education if they pay bribes. In this example, the bribe-giver’s ‘benefit’ is his or her rightful due but without the bribe the public can’t exercise that right.  The bribe-takers receive an advantage for carrying out functions that are anyway their duty.  School admission is a clear example in the Sri Lankan context where, those who can afford to pay bribes have an advantage over others to get admissions in few popular schools in the country. Here the bribe

[1] https://www.treasury.gov.lk/api/file/d0bbb4a3-3b7f-4b2e-98ae-fdecc0181788

[2] https://thediplomat.com/2024/06/adanis-wind-power-project-in-sri-lanka-hits-rough-weather/

taker’s actions prevent the rightful students, who live in the proximity of the school, getting admitted to the nearest schools.

There are many different types of corruption. One useful way to classify corruption is to consider ‘grand’ and ‘petty’ or ‘administrative’ corruption. Grand corruption typically takes place at the public sphere’s top tiers, and within the highest levels in private businesses. The well- known central Bank Bond Scam and Adani deal are examples of grand corruption. Grand corruptions are acts by elite persons in the society who either make laws or responsible for implementing rules, policies and executive decisions. Grand corruption involves large sums of money. Grand corruption is also often called political corruption, highlighting the direct or indirect involvement of political leaders in such corruption.  Grand corruption can also be acts of large private corporations. One good example is Volkswagen’s violation of emission reductions rules[1].

Petty or administrative corruption are small-scale, everyday corruption at the interface between public institutes and citizens.  Petty corruption is  bribery linked to the implementation of existing laws, rules and regulations. For example, public servants deliver services, only if they receive a private payment that is in addition to the institutionalized official price for this service. There are many examples of petty corruption In Sri Lanka.  Bribery paid to get the house construction plans approved, obtain the timber transport permits, get school admissions, get route permit for private bus, get the driver’s license, avoid the delays in pension payments initiation are only a few examples of widespread petty corruption. Usually, modest sums of money change hands in each case. However, when petty corruption is widespread, it can create many inefficiencies, public nuisance and even discourage foreign investments in a country. Even if the payments are modest in petty corruption, it can disproportionately affect the poor.

3. Impact of Corruption on the Economy

Why should one worry about corruption? Besides the ethical and moral considerations, ccorruption undermines economic development and threatens state security. It also undermines democratic values. The United Nations (UN) member states acknowledged the threat of  corruption to the development process and have included Goal 16 into the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – calling on states to ‘substantially reduce corruption in all their forms.’

“Corruption undermines development and, in turn, effective anti-corruption efforts accelerate countries’ progress towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Preventing illicit outflows and ensuring the timely return of stolen assets can make a significant contribution to unlocking resources for financing development efforts”[2].

While the above quotation signifies the importance of reducing corruption, one may still argue that if the corrupt gains are being circulated within the economy, it may not affect economic growth in a country and it will only have distributional implications. Most often the corrupt gains may be circulating within the economy in petty corruption but in grand corruption, very often, ill-gained money flows out of the economy. There are proven cases such as Ferdinand Marcos in Philippines and many claims about Sri Lankan politicians syphoning ill gained money to Dubai, Seashells and Uganda. In fact, the IMF governance diagnostic report states that “current

[1] https://www.epa.gov/vw/learn-about-volkswagen-violations

[2] https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/migration/asia_pacific_rbap/a5da6055e42bffdd5525854d04b3b0c99872e05a7afe57f56e18066428b61257.pdf

governance arrangements have not established clear standards for permissible official behaviour, acted to deter and sanction transgressions, nor pursued individuals and stolen public funds that have exited the country. This statement clearly shows that there is credible evidence that some of the embezzled wealth through grand corruption has been taken out of the country. Such leakages are detrimental to the economy because otherwise these resources would have been invested in the economy or spent on health, education or public infrastructure development.

The following section discusses some economic and social impacts of corruption.

3.1. Public Spending on Wrong Projects

Priority in allocation of government or borrowed funds should be given due consideration to high development impact and quick return. Politicians distort the order of public spending, disregarding economic principles applied to prioritize projects and allocate budgets for activities that lead to larger bribes or commissions. Corrupt politicians’ love for some large infrastructure developments, such as roads, power plants, harbors, etc. are because of opportunities for larger commissions or personal political gains. The Lotus Tower, The Magam Ruhunupura International Convention Centre, the Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, the Hambantota International Port, the Mahinda Rajapaksa International Cricket Stadium and the myriad of highways in the country are live examples of such worthless projects.

Amongst the many impacts of this practice, countries will experience debt traps, such as the one we experience in Sri Lanka now, due to inefficient allocation of borrowed funds prioritizing bribes and other political considerations. Corruption forces to ignore the timeliness and the magnitude of the social benefits of projects. Such projects either do not generate benefits or generate benefit at a slow rate. Thus, the tax revenue or direct revenue attributed to these projects are insufficient to repay the loans.  Moreover, borrowing from more expensive commercial sources to avoid checks and balances of conventional donors like the World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) exacerbates the debt crises. The current debt crisis which eventually led Sri Lanka to suspend the debt repayment is mainly due to borrowing from more expensive commercial sources and the corrupt practice of allocation of borrowed resources for slow return or no return projects.

3.2. Excessive Costs of Infrastructure

Grand corruption leads to higher cost for infrastructure development. It seems that escalated cost of a project allows collusion between contracting companies and politician and top bureaucrats (P&TB) so that the contractors gain excess profits even after paying bribes. This is a win-win situation for the contractors and the P&TB. The Central Highway segment between Rambukkana to Galagedara will illustrate the gravity of corruption and its economic implications. Based on the publicly available data on the per km costs of highways of ADB  funded projects in 15 countries, the average  of the cost of 33 projects was $1.63 million per km with the range of $0.94- 6.96 million.  Some of the low values in the ADB project sample are because of two lane roads. The highest cost in this sample was from the Southern Transport Development Project (STDP, southern highway) of Sri Lanka and my comparison is based on the cost of STDP. Two bids were qualified for this road segment; one for $1870 million by a local consortium and the other for $1050 million by a Chinese company. The higher bid instead the lower one was selected. Based on the contract value of $1870 million, the proposed highway segment will cost $93.5 million per

[1] Based on an article in Sunday Times

[2] Based on an article in Sunday Times

6. The per km cost of STDP’s is $6.96 million. Rambukkan -Galagedara road segment costs about 13.4 times more in comparison to the STDP cost. Even with the lower bid value of $1050 million, per km cost is $52.5 per Km. This difference cannot be explained by using higher resettlement cost or any technical reason like elevated highway and tunnels. The only logical explanation is corruption. Sri Lanka was able to borrow and repay loans for some time and this option is no longer available for the country. When the infrastructure is built with such inflated costs, returns are inadequate to repay loans and the burden is finally transferred to the taxpayers.

3.3. Increase the Cost of Borrowing

Corruption incentivizes the P&TB to borrow from commercial sources despite the availability of low interest loans from conventional donors like the  World Bank, ADB and bi-lateral donors. Conventional donors make it a requirement to undertake financial and economic analysis of projects and impose strict procurement guidelines whereas commercial banks are only interested about the creditworthiness of the borrowing country. In the case of international sovereign bonds (ISB) the same applies. Moreover, there is no coordination among the bond holders to monitor the usage of the money by the borrowing government. This allows the borrowing country government to use the borrowed money for no return/low return projects which provide higher opportunities for corruption. The conventional lenders charge much lower interest rates and leaning towards the commercial borrowing that foster corruption since 2007 has significantly contributed to the current debt crisis.  One of the commercial loans taken from the City Bank had a repayment period of five years with an interest rate of 5.5%. At that time ADB provided loans with less than 2% of interest rates with 5-6 years of a grace period, and a 20-year repayment period. Government’s interest to borrow from this costly source, against the huge cost to the society, can only be explained by the ability of the government to use the borrowed money for certain purposes that provide the involved P&TB to get higher commissions or some political advantage.

3.4. Poor Quality Infrastructure

Higher costs of infrastructure can also be manifested in terms of poor-quality infrastructure. The P&TB influence competitive bidding processes, and contracts are awarded to less qualified companies to receive bribes. Politicians interfere with the monitoring and quality assurance process allowing the contractor to build low quality infrastructure. Poor quality infrastructure, with huge maintenance costs and frequent repairs is the end result.

3.5. Long Delays of Projects

Bidding process is sometimes delayed for years until the P&TB cut a lucrative deal from the contractor. There are reasonable suspicions that the delay in awarding contract for the proposed gas fired power plant in Sri Lanka during the Yahapalanaya regime is due to the two topmost politicians favoring two different companies, and no one having enough power to override the other. The end result is the delay in constructing the power plant and the purchase of power with excessive costs. Sri Lanka was the only country in South Asia that got rid of power cuts. Power cuts in 2022 was partly due to the delay in implementation of Ceylon Electricity Board CEB generation plan.  Power cuts affect every sector in the economy and ramification of this, in terms of Sri Lanka’s appeal for much needed foreign direct investments, development of sectors lime tourism, industry and agriculture is enormous.

3.6. Good Project May Never Get Implemented

Some development projects with good development impacts are never implemented because of failure to agree on the bribe. Often, this happens when the P&TB request a bribe that is too big given size of the project. Imagine a fish processing project that costs about $ 100 million and the requested bribe for approving it is $50 million. With this 50% cost escalation, the investing company cannot compete in the international market. The private investor who already spent a couple of millions of dollars for feasibility studies had no option other than giving up the project. The country loses the opportunity to implement a good investment project that would have generated a sizable employment.

3.7. Discourages Foreign Investments

Grand corruption discourages or even prevents foreign direct investments (FDI). Simply when the imposed bribes are so large, private companies cannot make a reasonable profit.  Therefore, private investors avoid highly corrupt countries. In this era of global integration with advanced information technology, stories about corruption spread amongst potential investors very fast. Corruption indices of international development agencies such as World Bank confirm such high levels of corruption in Sri Lanka.  It is worthwhile to undertake a detailed study as to why Sri Lanka failed to attract FDIs despite comprehensive incentive package provided by its Board of Investment. One of the obvious reasons for low FDI in Sri Lanka may be that larger bribes are unaffordable to investors. Even the conventional donors hesitate to work in highly corrupt countries. Once there was an attempt by a bi-lateral donor to finance a segment of the central highway. Donor wanted to have a clause in the loan agreement to the effect that if there are accusations of attempt of corruption, it has the right to suspend the project until an investigation is completed. These types of conditions are common in donor funded projects. The government did not agree to this clause citing that it violates the sovereign rights of the country. Finally, donor didn’t finance the project.

3.8. Increases Utility Bills

The procurement process in Sri Lanka has many loopholes. One of the very important loopholes is that power vested with the cabinet to overrule the decisions of the procurement committees.  This allows the political leaders awarding contracts at an excessive cost to the society. For example,  Sri Lanka entered into a 20-year power purchase agreement with India’s Adani Green Energy, for two wind power stations developed by the company in the North and East. The project is supposed to  install of 484 megawatts of wind power in Mannar and Pooneryn. The Mannar (250 MW) and Pooneryn (234 MW) wind projects will be implemented with an investment of US$ $2,600 million. The projects with such large contract values should be subjected to open competitive bidding process. There is a provision to entertain a project proposal without a competitive bidding, if proposal to come from a sovereign government according to the 2013 amendment to the Electricity Act.  The Ministry of Power pretended that the proposal is from the Government of India and bypassed the procurement procedure. The government signed the contract with Adani Green Energy, not with the Government of India.

There were corruption allegations against this and three fundamental rights petitions have been filed in Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court challenging the Adani Green Energy Wind(AGESL), power project proposed for Mannar.  Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL) claims that   the information submitted for approval by  AGESL did not adequately assess the least cost and technical compatibility. As per the Power and Energy Ministry information, the agreement was to pay US $ 0.086 per kWh. An estimate by an independent energy expert shows that the levelized costs of a kWh is $0.058.  As claimed by the CEB some bids submitted by local firms for a similar wind project cost $ 0.0488 per kWh.  Also there are some claims in newspaper articles that AGESL sells wind power at $0.04 in India. The social cost of this 20 year contract with AGESL is about Rs.138 – 189 billion per year.  Annual social cost of this deal is Rs. 14839 – 18927 million and the  total loss  for 20 years at 10 discount rate is about Rs. 116 –  158 billion. These losses will be transferred to the public and eventually electricity consumer will pay this additional amount during the next 20 years. The most important fact is that such deals are made while the public is struggling with higher electricity prices: about 1.5 million households were disconnected from the grid in 2023 and a considerable proportion was not able to reconnect; over 40% of the households gave up using rice cooker and water heater to cope up with higher electricity prices; about 33% of the households shifted from clean energy sources of cooking to firewood.

3.8. Life Risks

Life risks used to be related to corruption in approving buildings and eventual result in collapse of them killing many workers, in South Asian countries.   For example, in Bangladesh garment factory building collapsed killing many people. In Nepal many buildings which had construction permits that certify as earthquake proofed, collapsed during the earthquake in 2015. These are good example as to how the corruption put people’s lives at risk. Globally, 1.6 percent of annual deaths in children under 5 -more than 140,000 deaths- can be explained in part by corruption.  Corruption related life risks in the health sector are emerging in Sri Lanka. The well-known immunoglobulin scandal is a case in point. Supply of low-quality immunoglobulin vials, resulted in a number of adverse allergic reactions and deaths are clear signs of emerging patterns of corruption related life risks in Sri Lanka.  Importing counterfeit drugs bypassing the policies, resulting in defective medical supplies is a common problem that cause life risks in the country.

3.9. Non-financial costs

Corruption has more than just financial and economic costs. It reduces public trust and citizens’ willingness to participate in society. For example, citizens who perceive politicians as corrupt may not bother to vote in elections, get engaged in politics, or pay taxes. Revelation of corruption by the telephone records released by a former member of parliament had a highly significant impact amongst the public in Sri Lanka.  Despite the country is in need of foreign currency to repay debt and purchase day today imports, expatriate workers refuse to send money through official channels, initially due to lucrative black market and after floating the Rupee due to perceptions of corruption. Given the large number of new migrant workers, remittance should be in the range of $1-1.2 billion per month. Current remittances are still below $600 million per month.

3.10. Perpetuates Inequality

As found in many countries, poor people suffer disproportionately from corruption. In lower middle-income households, petty bribes to access a government service can cut deep into a family’s disposable income. When access to good quality education is only limited to non-poor, poor peoples’ only chance to improve their lives will be lost.  In countries where corruption is widespread in getting access to health, education and other basic services can have long term negative impact on the country’s economic growth.

3.11. Nurture Organized Crimes

Corruption is often linked to organized crimes. It thrives in conflict and war. High levels of corruption can make prolonged conflict more likely, and push post-conflict societies back into war. Wide-spread drug problem continues all over the world mainly because of collusion of law enforcement agency officials and political leaderships with organized crime syndicates.

3.12 Promote Environmental Degradation

Corruption can also undermine climate change and other environmental management initiatives, as powerful actors bribe their way out of environmental responsibilities in pursuit of profits. Moreover, ccorruption undermines the responsible management of natural resource. Depletion of forest resources despite heavy regulatory measures in Sri Lanka is a good example. ADB funded power plant in Asian countries install pollution control equipment, but the installed equipment are not switch on most of the time. Operating a complete set of air pollution control equipment in a coal fired power plant can consume about 10 -12% of the power generated. Plant managers bribe the inspectors and evade the due process causing air pollution.

[1] https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/sri-lankas-utility-regulator-refuses-approval-adani-wind-power-project-north-east

[2] https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/sri-lanka-enters-20-year-power-purchase-deal-adani-wind-farms-mannar-and-pooneryn

[3] Adani Wind Power Project: Making a curvy record straight needs more effort than quoting tweets | Daily FT

[4] https://thediplomat.com/2024/06/adanis-wind-power-project-in-sri-lanka-hits-rough-weather/

[5] Authors estimates. Upper range considers the levelized price of $0.0488 per kWh

[6] These a provisional figures from a on going study of Center for Poverty Aanalyis

[7] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK535646/

[8] https://www.adaderana.lk/news.php?nid=96964

[9] https://www.sundaytimes.lk/231203/news/drug-purchases-fresh-evidence-reveals-more-details-about-health-ministrys-fast-track-deals-540992.html

4. Corruption and Social Protection

Sri Lanka’s social protection system has many different programs. This discussion is limited to the Samurdhi and its successor Aswasuma. Samurdhi program started in 1995 with the objective of eliminating poverty in Sri Lanka, mainly through the inclusion of low-income households and the provision of resources to support economic improvement. The sub-objectives the program are: broadening opportunities for income enhancement and employment; organizing youth, women, and other disadvantaged segments into small groups and encouraging them to participate in decision-making activities and developmental processes at the grassroots level; assisting persons to develop their talents and strengthening their asset bases through productive employment; and establishing and maintaining productive assets to create additional employment opportunities at the rural level. This program spent about Rs. 275.8 billion between 2004 and 2018 with an annual average of Rs. 17.2 billion.  It supported 1.86 million families in 2004 and the number reduced to 1.38 million by 2008.

The Samurdhi Program has helped numerous families to overcome poverty, which allowed for some wealth redistribution from the non-poor to the poor. However, amongst the many, its main weakness is the large exclusion error and consequently the large inclusion error. The World Bank (2012), the Centre for Poverty Analysis(CEPA) (2007) and many other organizations have confirmed that about 50% of the Samurdhi program resources are given to non-poor making this program inefficient. This exclusion error is not an unavoidable mistake. It is a purposive inclusion of politically loyal families for the ruling party to maintain its voter base. There is sufficient evidence to prove this point. In essence, this is a form of corruption that misuses the tax money for political campaigns. Between 2004 and 2018 about Rs. 137.9 billion of tax payers money has been misused by the government for party politics. Instead of bribing the voters, this large sum of money could have been put to better use by supporting the excluded poor.

The successor of the Samurdhi program – Aswesuma – was implemented in July 2023 to support the poor during the economic crisis.  The poverty incidence increased from about 4% to 30% due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent economic crisis. Aswesuma is different from Samurdhi as it is a consumption cash transfer. There were no poverty alleviation elements in Aswesuma as was in Samurdhi. The program included 2 million families and they were categorized as Transitional, vulnerable, poor and severely poor and monthly allowances were provided based on the category.   

One of the main reason for changing from Samurdhi to Aswasuma is the large exclusion errors in Samurdhi. Seemingly, this was a positive change and the government’s efforts to generate funds for this program at the crucial time should be appreciated. A twenty one criteria system was developed for a systematic selection of eligible families. CEPA was hired to train the trainers for implementing the selection process by the World Bank. In the meantime the Government issued a gazette notification indicating that the government officials will be responsible for any errors in selection of eligible households. In response to this gazette notification the unions of the government officials threatened to go on strike. Finally,  the training programs did not take place and selection of the households was done without following a transparent process. As per the official statistics of the Welfare Benefit Board, 3,744 million applications were received. The number of appeals were 1.028 million together with 134,540 objections. An International Labour Organization and, UN Women publication stated that:

the hit-or-miss approach aided by the verification process via text messaging and QR codes ensured many vulnerable women were left out of the process of identification. It also led to a lack of accountability, as public officials claimed that they were not involved in the selection process”

The first year of Aswesuma program ended in July 2024. The justification to introduce a new program instead of the Samurdhi was compromised by including 400,000 Samurdhi recipients to the program. Preliminary findings of a CEPA household survey indicates that the exclusion errors of Aswesuma can be as high as 70%. Given the followed selection process and the outcome of possible large exclusion errors it is logical to ask the question whether changing from Samurdhi to Aswasuma was an attempt to change political loyalty from one political party to another? Undertaking a proper post evaluation and revisiting the selection criteria are of paramount importance in implementing the next phase of Aswesuma, if the borrowed scarce resources to be used efficiently.

5. The Way Forward

Corruption, which could derail the entire development process, is a one of the major challenge for Sri Lanka. In a broader sense, corruption is a characteristic of underdevelopment and many types of corruption disappear when countries develop. Unfortunately, corruption can also be a major constraint for development. As described in this article, corruption, among other factors, have contributed significantly to the current economic crisis in the country. Sri Lanka faces the urgent need to undertake reforms to curb corruption to put the country to on a sustainable path of economic growth.  The IMF governance diagnostic report offers a total of 89 recommendations to this end, with 16 being categorized as priority recommendations and the civil society organizations proposed similar recommendations:

1. Improving the legal frameworks for anti-corruption.
2. Asset declaration by political leaders and higher ranking government officials.
3. Strengthening the role of the Auditor General.
4. Investigation of corruption cases and money laundering.
5. Improving budget formulation and transparency.
6. Transparent and accountable public investment management.
7. State-owned enterprise reforms and management.
8. Transparency and accountability in tax policy reforms.
9. Independene and accountability in Central Bank governance.
10. Reforming the framework handling Employees’ Provident Fund.
11. Financial sector oversight.
12. Rule of law.
13. Implementation and enhancement of Right To Information legal framework.

While there is a need to take vast array of measures to reduce corruption, which is well entrenched across all the layers in the Sri Lankan society, some quick supplementary measures should be taken.  First, ending the impunity enjoyed by the political leaders and higher-ranking government officials is an urgent and immediate action needed to curb corruption. Towards this end the electoral reforms to conduct presidential, parliament and provincial council elections in one day should be given due consideration. Such electoral reforms can reduce demand for grand corruption by politicians substantially, because one root cause of corruption is election campaign expenses. Second, the old, irrelevant and corruption enabling permit systems and regulations should be removed to prevent petty corruptions. Third, all the public servants and politicians should be provided with reasonable salaries to ensure decent living in the long run. In order to achieve  an efficient public sector with a reasonable number of employees, commensurate to the size of the economy, should be maintained. Fourth, the positive steps of providing right incentives should be complemented with better law enforcement. Fifth, use of  information technology, which provides many more co-benefits should be given priority to curb corruption, particularly in tax collection.

Many of the changes required are included in the Anti-Corruption Act, 2023. There is no paucity of legal and regulatory measures to curb corruption in Sri Lanka. What is lacking is government’s commitment to implement the available legal provisions because the beneficiaries of corruption are the political leaders and government officials. Given that the wide-spread corruption is one of the main barriers for the development of the country, the pollical will of the next government to curb corruption will determine the fate of the nation.

[1] Ramos et.al 2020, Social protection in Sri Lanka: An analysis of the social, economic and political effectiveness of the Samurdhi program. Munich Personal RePEc Archive (MPRA).

[2] The World Bank 2012, Sri Lanka’s Demographic Transition: Facing the Challenges of an Aging Population with Few Resources, Luxshmanan Nadaraja, 29 September

[3] CEPA, 28 October 200. 7Poverty alleviation programmes ineffective -, Sunday Times Sri Lanka

[4] https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/samurdhi-programme-sri-lanka

[5] file:///C:/Users/hmg54/OneDrive/Desktop/SL%20Economy/social_assistance_in_crises_and_austerity_sri_lanka_en.pdf

[6] The author edited the recommendations