Post-pandemic strategies for Sri Lanka

With the new Omicron variant raising its head in Sri Lanka, we have to learn to live with the virus and change our lifestyles. First, let us not repeat our mistakes again. It is quite clear that the curfew system is a total failure. For one, it has crippled our economy. In the second place it has unnecessarily disrupted society as a whole. So, what is the strategy? This may sound counter-intuitive, but the solution is to stop curfew and extend the operating hours of all commercial establishments, and back-end services that serve the public. This and only through this will we learn to live with the COVID-19 virus and any and all its variants yet to manifest, even with a vaccine

Like many countries, Sri Lanka faced the COVID-19 pandemic having no contingency or being prepared for its economic fallout. Since we did not have our own guidelines, we then proceeded to blindly follow whatever the developed North did. 

Sri Lanka proceeded to close the only functioning airport even to transit passengers and cargo which led to a disastrous situation with the travel and tourism industry. Airlines then suspended their flights to and through Sri Lanka. We did not see the opportunity of being the only regional airport (between Dubai and Singapore) to be open and offer transit passenger and cargo services in a bio bubble. 

Had we done so, more airlines would have kept on flying through Sri Lanka as well as made other routing changes to their network, to increase the transit traffic to fill their flights operating through Sri Lanka. Such changes would have made the Katunayake International Airport a significant partner for the airline industry, beating the regional competition. This would mean, the reversal of these routing changes would not take place until things returned back to normal. Now, it is two years since the opportunity came our way and things are yet to come back to normal. Alas we let that opportunity elude us due to lack of strategic foresight in the leadership of the aviation/airline sector who were not able to give the right advice to the country’s political leadership.

During the continuing pandemic situation there will be windows of opportunity for Sri Lanka to open and close the tourism industry to markets/countries based on the spread of the virus. 

These markets/countries may or may not have direct air connectivity to Sri Lanka. Therefore, it is vital for Sri Lanka to adopt an open skies policy1 instead of trying to protect a historically lossmaking airline, which brings in only 50% of the tourist traffic2 to Sri Lanka. If the national carrier is to survive it should do so by competing with other international airlines. If Sri Lanka is to achieve its annual tourist arrival targets it will have to choose between the national carrier and achieving the arrival target. The current “eat the cake and have it” policy just will not work. 

This scenario will hold true even after the end of the pandemic. The mediocre policy of trying it out or offering open skies for Mattala International Airport just will not suffice either; we will have to open up Katunayake International Airport if we want to achieve the numbers and go beyond.

However, mush saner thinking prevailed within the maritime/shipping industry which tried to provide as much a normal service to the shipping lines as it could. This needs to be acknowledged and appreciated. Sri Lanka must now learn from this and proceed to develop its port infrastructure (Colombo, Galle, Hambantota and Trincomalee) to enable all of them to operate in a ‘port bio bubble’ when the next pandemic strikes. This means developing hotel and medical facilities (possibly using vertical buildings) within the port that can cater to crew and workers on site as well as having suitable infrastructure to retain the labour force with residential facilities within the port. 

I am not advocating starting the building of a hospital and houses inside the ports. However, contingencies and basic multi-functional infrastructure must be put in place to enable a naval or army field hospital to operate within these premises and provide temporary accommodation for ship crews and port workers when needed, or use other facilities such as a hospital ship and cruise ship which can accommodate three to five thousand port workers and few hundred ship crews. 

Sri Lanka, like most developing countries suffers enormous financial and labour time losses due to road traffic congestion. This cost of traffic and labour productivity loss is estimated at Rs. 32 billion per annum, and increasing annually. This has a major impact on our balance of payments as we are a net importer of petroleum fuel. The pandemic exacerbated this situation and we need to be more prepared and less dependent on fossil fuels. We must accelerate the building of bypass roads, flyovers, bridges, tunnels and expansion of existing roads and junctions in the main cities to eliminate the bottlenecks which cause this loss

We must at least learn and further improve from our success with the maritime port operations during the pandemic. As such, airports must also be able to operate in a bio bubble. It is encouraging to note that a hotel is now being built within the Katunayake International Airport complex, not because of the pandemic but as an attempt to provide hotel facilities to transit passengers (mimicking what other hub airports have to offer). The airport complex too must include appropriate and adequate infrastructure to allow the operation of a hospital/medical facility and residential facilities for crew and labour to allow it to operate in a bio bubble if and when needed. This will be the new reality going forward; expecting things to return back to the previous normal would be futile. 

Opportunities that have not been exploited to its full potential are, the advantage of having ports and airports in close proximity (i.e. Colombo and Katunayake, Hambantota and Mattala), to enable ship crew and airline crew transfers. When we are able to implement a port and airport bio bubble, we can make maximum use of these facilities. Since airports tend to be underutilised during pandemics and the fleet of our national carrier being small, Sri Lanka lost the opportunity to allow long stay turnaround/layover flights for air and ship crew and transfer passengers to operate from our airports. Let us hope that the leadership of these facilities are prepared and work together to bring the maximum benefit to Sri Lanka when the next pandemic strikes. 

With the new Omicron variant raising its head in Sri Lanka, we have to learn to live with the virus and change our lifestyles. First, let us not repeat our mistakes again. It is quite clear that the curfew system is a total failure. For one, it has crippled our economy. In the second place it has unnecessarily disrupted society as a whole. So, what is the strategy? This may sound counter-intuitive, but the solution is to stop curfew and extend the operating hours of all commercial establishments, and back-end services that serve the public. This and only through this will we learn to live with the COVID-19 virus and any and all its variants yet to manifest, even with a vaccine. 

Let me elaborate on this strategy further. Since we cannot make existing shops, banks and other retail consumer product and service areas larger, we will be restricted with the current available space to serve the customers. Reduction of customers significantly is not feasible; however, we may be able to switch some brick-and-mortar customers to online customers. The vast majority of customers will have to be served by another human being. The only other variable is the time we have to serve a customer. In a day (in 24 hours), we have commercial operations for a maximum of eight hours. So, the only variable in this equation which we can play around is ‘time’! 

Take a normal grocery shop that serves 300 customers a day. During pre-COVID-19 days, say it opened for eight hours (10 a.m. to 6 p.m.) and would serve on average 37/38 customers per hour. However, people do not come in a predictive, equidistant and time sequenced manner. Therefore, there will always be at least two peak periods of the day, once in the morning and once in the evening. So, there is a natural clustering of customers and which would not at all be conducive to social distancing. Now, since we need social distance, if we extend the opening hours to 12 hours (8 a.m. to 8 p.m.), then the average hourly rate will drop to 25 customers and the peaks will be much less. If we were to take it to a maximum of say 16 hours (6 a.m. to 10 p.m.), the number would drop to 18/19 customers with possibly two small bumps. Now imagine this same principle applied to banks, supermarkets, petrol stations, fish 

markets and even wholesale markets. This will allow businesses to enforce social distancing where a steady stream of orderly customers will patronise their establishments. 

When people know that the businesses will be open for a longer period and that the goods and services will be available, they will be more inclined to adhere to social distancing and stay at the expected distance and wait patiently for their turn since they are sure of service and product availability. They will not waste time, staying in long queues and huddling together when they are sure of being served at their convenience outside the normal hours of operations. 

People will adjust, take advantage of the longer opening hours to reduce their own stress of having to do everything in a small window of time, and not create congestion at retail points as well as on the roads. The upside to this strategy is that it is likely to create additional part-time employment. In order to facilitate this, the Government will have to change the shop and office workers act to accommodate 24-hour retailing and formalise part-time work. Removing all legislative barriers for women to work in certain industries along with removing restrictions for women working after 10 p.m. will ensure the availability of a workforce. To complement this strategy, the banking act must also be revised to allow for 24-hour banking. 

Sri Lanka, like most developing countries suffers enormous financial and labour time losses due to road traffic congestion. This cost of traffic3 and labour productivity loss is estimated at Rs. 32 billion per annum, and increasing annually. This has a major impact on our balance of payments as we are a net importer of petroleum fuel. The pandemic exacerbated this situation and we need to be more prepared and less dependent on fossil fuels. We must accelerate the building of bypass roads, flyovers, bridges, tunnels and expansion of existing roads and junctions in the main cities to eliminate the bottlenecks which cause this loss. 

The abovementioned strategy of extended trading and banking hours will also help ease congestion. A lack of public interest in this massive annual loss has made this a low priority for our political leadership. The much politicised and publicised (by the mainstream media) anthem of “Colambata kiri apita kakiri” creates a perception that such interventions benefit the city dweller more than the rural folk and is the main barrier to overcome in order to do this change. 

It would be far more beneficial nationally to prioritise the fixing of the congestion in the main cities than having wide roads in the rural areas that are hardly used.

Even though we as a nation cannot keep up with the power generation requirements to meet annual GDP growth rates (which is universally accepted as: one percentage point in GDP growth rate requires a six-percentage point growth in power generation), Sri Lanka has shown great political leadership in its energy policy by setting an ambitious target of generating 70% of power from renewable sources by 2030. The current political focus is on solar power, one of the cheapest sources of energy and it must be acknowledged that Sri Lanka has a lot of it. 

However solar power is not the only free source of power. Sri Lanka has plenty of hydro power potential, another free source of renewable energy. This potential is currently underutilised due to the minimal exploitation of mini and micro hydro power generation. This potential is still untapped due to policy barriers and institutional atrophy. Let us hope that the current plans to restructure the Ceylon Electricity Board will rejuvenate hydro power in Sri Lanka and herald the second wave of accelerated hydropower projects (mini and micro) to tap the full potential within three to five years.

To go with the policy of 70% renewable it is vital to invest in electricity based urban transportation systems such as electrification of the main rail lines, (which comes straight into the main cities), commuter rail, rapid transit, trams and monorails should also ease the traffic as well as lower the fuel import bills. It is a shame that the tram system that was available at the time of independence has been destroyed. It would have been of immense value had it been preserved. Simultaneously, the Government must take urgent steps to wane the public of all subsidised transport and charge full economic value from all commuters. The pandemic induced new reality of working from home must be fully exploited to minimise travel at peak times. 

The Government should also consider the importing of electric vehicles for all ministers, ministries, provincial and local Government operations. It is important to create a critical mass of electric vehicles to enable the building of a network of charging stations. To facilitate private sector investment, it is vital to amend the electricity board act of 1969 to allow the generation and retailing of electricity by individuals and businesses. Coupled with the urgent implementation of an automatic load balancing system (a national security requirement) would then enable the creation of such a network. 

Solar power is not the only free source of power. Sri Lanka has plenty of hydro power potential, another free source of renewable energy. This potential is currently underutilised due to the minimal exploitation of mini and micro hydro power generation. This potential is still untapped due to policy barriers and institutional atrophy. Let us hope that the current plans to restructure the Ceylon Electricity Board will rejuvenate hydro power in Sri Lanka and herald the second wave of accelerated hydropower projects (mini and micro) to tap the full potential within three to five years

Given the current Government’s two-third majority in parliament it would be a shame if it would be kept unchanged and the CEB tasked with having to build a network of charging stations Island wide. This would inevitably mean that the 70% target of renewable energy by the Government will not be achieved by 2030. It is a shame that we have achieved 100% access to electricity in 2019 (according to the World Bank) but not be able to generate enough energy required for its citizenry on a daily basis up to now (2022). 

All indications are that, if not corrected now, the situation will get worse, becoming the number one barrier for national development.

Footnotes:

1 An open skies agreement is an agreement between two nations which basically permits unrestricted air travel between them.

2 SLTDA Annual Statistics Report 2018

3 S.A.C.S. Jayasooriya and Y.M.M.S. Bandara, “Measuring the Economic costs of traffic congestion,” 2017 Moratuwa Engineering Research Conference (MERCon), 2017, pp. 141-146, doi:10.1109/MERCon.2017.7980471.

(The writer is the author of the book “How Small Countries Can Compete and Grow - A Case for Sri Lanka”. He is the founder of R & R Associates Consulting a sector independent Strategy Consulting practice.)