SRI LANKA-Period of Questioning


ON visiting Sri Lanka recently after an absence of 21 years, my first superficial impression was that it had undergone little change. In Colombo and along the populous southwest coast, the most noticeable changes were the large number of hotels and restaurants and gem shops, entering mainly to a tourist traffic that is unfortunately shrinking rapidly. This made me wonder whether such a large investment of scarce capital resources in a part of the tertiary sector with a very elastic demand in the hope of earning substantial foreign exchange was justifiable in any underdeveloped country.