An analysis of knowledge economy in Sri Lanka:a regional perspective

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine and evaluate Sri Lankan knowledge economy and its transformation process to assess Sri Lankan readiness to embrace a knowledge economy and further to seek the challenges that Sri Lanka confronts in becoming a strong knowledge economy. This study adopts benchmarking process which benchmarks Sri Lanka's readiness for knowledge economy with its competitive, neighbouring countries and with several strong knowledge economies under four drivers of knowledge economy: Human Resource, Information and Communication Technology Infrastructure, Innovation System and Business Environment. The study is based on published information of various sources. The study analyses the indices data by comparing year 2000 and year 2012 with all necessary variables proposed by the Knowledge Assessment Methodology. The findings of the study indicate that the level of Sri Lanka's readiness to embrace a strong knowledge economy is quite strong compared to other South Asian countries. However when compared with the selected strong knowledge economies of the Asia Pacific region, the readiness should be further improved to gain the vast majority of its benefits to the economy.