Sri Lanka currently serves as a hub for maritime goods transport and air-passenger transport in the southern sub-continental region, drawing on its geographical and economic advantages. The keys to their present relative success were decisions taken by different governments to remove counter-productive restrictions, establish effective regulatory mechanisms, and step back, allowing private actors to supply the services. More reforms on these lines are required to consolidate these successes and build upon them.
Policymakers on both sides of the Palk Strait should, as they did a few years ago in the Joint Study Group report on the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, seek to harness the efficiencies that would come from better utilization of Sri Lanka’s logis