Category: Special Reports

May 26, 2011 (LBO) – I am on an American Airlines flight from Phoenix, Arizona to St Louis, Missouri having enjoyed the only break in the rigorous seven week Eisenhower Fellowship program at the Grand Canyon, America’s great natural wonder. From St Louis I go to San Francisco and a number of other cities to […]

May 26, 2011 (LBO) – Due to the growth of social media and the internet Sri Lankan firms have to be increasingly vigilant to safeguard the reputation of their brands among today’s well informed consumers, a senior executive said. Brands build bonds with end users to ensure they continually consume their products. Brand specialist say […]

May 04, 2011 (LBO) Climate change is a burning issue under discussion today. As a small island nation, Sri Lanka is vulnerable to serious threats of climate change, causing both humanitarian and health hazards, as flooding in recent months has shown. British Foreign Secretary William Hague has described climate change as perhaps the twenty-first century’s […]

Apr 23, 2011 (LBO) – Chandra Jayaratne, respected retired Sri Lankan business executive, and financial professional, has written President Mahinda Rajapaksa to stop state plans to build a controversial pension fund by dipping into the salaries of private sector workers. The full text of the letter is as follows. 22nd April 2011. His Excellency Mahinda […]

Mar 13, 2011 (LBO) – A Great Earthquake, one of the most powerful in recorded history, occurred off the coast of Honshu, North East Japan, on the 11th of March 2011. The previous Great Earthquake in Asia occurred off the coast of Sumatra, North West Indonesia, on the 26th of December 2004. Both were followed […]

Oct 31, 2010 (LBO)- Improved connectivity is an essential precondition for trade in goods and services, hopefully better governed once the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement between India and Sri Lanka is completed and signed. The already large movements of people between the two countries will only grow when multimodal and lower-cost options are restored and […]

Oct 22, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka has been awarded the record for the world’s “largest cup of tea,” but the stunt earlier this month may have also earned the island some gargantuan and enormously meaningless records. Had it coincided with the height of the monsoon, we could have also claimed the world’s largest cup […]

Oct 01, 2010 (LBO) – A citizen’s group in Sri Lanka has outlined harsh lessons from the island’s post independent history and suggested ways to a regain lost liberties by re-establishing rule of law. The submission of the ‘Friday Forum’ group was made to a state-appointed ‘Lessons Learnt & Reconciliation Commission’ (LLRC) which is looking […]

June 28, 2010 (LBO) – In the past four decades, whenever a political party or alliance secured a substantial majority of seats in parliament, that group of politicians has claimed the right to foist a new constitution on the people of this country. Constitution-making is not the prerogative, or indeed a legitimate function, of a […]

June 14, 2010 (LBO) – The recent protests in Colombo by a vocal group of businesses have brought to the fore the issue of Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) and its merits and demerits in the Sri Lankan context. Any independent observer will agree that the debate has got shrouded in emotion, and at times, […]

May 27, 2010 (LBO) – Education is an issue which many of us think we know how to fix, but, nobody is giving us the reigns. Lucky Minister Bandula Gunawardna the education ministry has fallen on his lap. Unlucky Minister BG – expectations about the ministry are high but there is no way that they […]

Apr 21, 2010 (LBO) – Dr Harsha de Silva has been an exemplary policy intellectual. He had the greatest impact in contributing to the shifting of the frame for discussing inflation in Sri Lanka from the misguided focus on imported inflation to one that correctly places the actions of the Central Bank and the now […]