CEPA Perspectives on Sri Lanka’s Crisis-led Poverty- by Sirimal Abeyratne
Sri Lanka’s economic crisis (2021-2023) has changed the country’s poverty landscape, demanding for fresh approaches to poverty analyses and policy-making for poverty reduction. While at the eve of the economic crisis, Sri Lanka was approaching the “last mile” of poverty alleviation drive, the crisis has resulted in an instantaneous increase in poverty and vulnerability in massive scale. Poverty reduction drive closer to the bottom of poverty ratio leaves the poor that are subject to structural causes of poverty, which cannot be addressed by the general poverty reduction strategies. Crisis-ridden poverty and vulnerability are results of a general set of factors underlying economic contraction and instability, while the typical policy responses to crises may also aggravate poverty implications. CEPA, while striving to produce its research outputs for dissemination and policy making, streamlines and expands its focus on the areas of crisis-led poverty and vulnerability issues and on the related policy implications. Areas of current research agenda CEPA: ->Analyses on post-crisis poverty issue of Sri Lanka focusing on multifaceted poverty, inequality, vulnerability and other relevant issues of social protection ->Assessment of the efficiency and effectiveness of the available social protection programmes, implementation issues, and monitoring issues and developing insights into better practices ->Research on the medium-term strategies for unlocking the country’s potentials for growth as means of effective poverty alleviation through income generation and employment creation ->Research on capacity building for poor and vulnerable segments of population in order to prepare them for facing new challenges and for integrating with benefiting from the growth process ->Supporting the poverty alleviation programme of Sri Lanka through undertaking research, disseminating research outputs, contributing to policy making and capacity-building
