“Sri Lanka’s Q2 GDP growth might hit -1 to 0%”: Dr. Rohantha Athukorala

Given the Easter attacks in April and the poor management of the situation by Sri Lankan authorities, the GDP is likely to hit -1 to 0%, said Artificial Intelligence company Clootrack Sri Lanka and Maldives President/CEO Dr. Rohantha Athukorala who was the keynote speaker at the District Conference of Rotaract for 2019 held at the Asia Foundation on 25 May.

Rotaract District holds the top 5,900 emerging leaders of the country in the Yolo generation, who were not in the workforce during the war times of Sri Lanka and who have experienced mainly the good times that Sri Lanka has seen in the last 10 years – only the good times. But now we need to understand the reality and fashion ourselves, said Dr. Athukorala who has held a multitude of positions like Chairman Sri Lanka Tourism, Sri Lanka Export Development and also headed the pivotal policy making entity in the Ministry of Finance in the Government of Sri Lanka.

“Sri Lanka’ s economy has been reeling since 2015 with the GDP growth declining from 4.5% in 2016 to 3.4% in 2017 whilst in 2018 it dropped to 3.2% as per Asian Development Bank whilst the South Asian counties GDP growth has been spiralling at 7% plus which means that Sri Lanka is lagging behind the region,” said Athukorala. 

“Let’s accept it – we are living in an environment which is volatile be it earthquakes, tsunamis or terror attacks and now the global travellers are immune to this but, what we see is that strong brands can bounce back quicker.” The best example is Thailand Tourism that has experience over 6,000 attacks on tourists between 2006 and 2018 with many of them losing their lives but the tourist arrivals have increased from 12 million to 35 million as at today. Hence we must all contribute to making the brand Sri Lanka strong again, he said.

“Hence, my key message to you is that Sri Lanka will bounce back within the next 8-10 months, latest within a year and you must now focus and sharpen your skillset by reading for an MBA, training yourself on new skills like project management, and the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to name a few. Remember that tourism belongs to all of us, hence each of us must become the brand manager of Sri Lanka on FB, WhatsApp, Twitter and Instagram to turnaround the economy to 3%,” voiced Dr. Athukorala.