Professor Nihal Amerasinghe to grace Benedictine prize day

Friday, 7 November 2014 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The Former Director General of the Agriculture and Social Development sectors of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and current Professor of Development Management at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), Dr. Nihal Amerasinghe, an alumnus of St. Benedict’s College, will attend the annual prize day of his alma mater on 8 November. During his school days, he excelled as a student and a sportsman representing the college in cricket from 1958 to 1961, captaining the tennis team in 1960 and winning colours in both sports. He entered the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Ceylon in 1962 and passed out first in his batch and was awarded the coveted University Prize for Agriculture in 1966 and thereafter joined the faculty staff. In 1968, he was awarded the prestigious Commonwealth Scholarship to the UK to read for a Master’s degree in Economics and Social Studies at Manchester University. Upon completion of his Master’s, he read for a PhD in Economics at the University of London. He then served in the Faculty of Agriculture at Peradeniya for three years and was appointed senior lecturer at the highly respected Australian National University in Canberra in 1977. In 1979, Dr. Amerasinghe joined the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the premier Development Institution for the Asia-Pacific Region. He worked for over two decades at the ADB, and rose to the Director General position of the Agriculture and Social Sectors Department, the only Sri Lankan to hold a position of Director General of an Operations Department at ADB. After retiring from the ADB in 2001, he has been a Professor of Development Management at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), Manila, Philippines and Dr. Amerasinghe considers this a period in his life for giving back all the knowledge and experience which he had gathered for more than four decades. He is also a consultant to srganisations like the World Bank, ADB, JICA, International Rice Research Institution (IRRI). He has also been teaching at the Postgraduate Institution of Agriculture at Peradeniya and has trained Sri Lankan officials at the Department of Finance, all on gratis basis.