EVALUATING FISCAL PERFORMANCE OF SRI LANKA: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION

In the recent past, after second wave of reforms program, finances of Sri Lanka assumed utmost importance and attracted the concentration of experts, analysts, policymakers and regulatory bodies. The country has initiated reforms process to overcome the poor position of its finances. The finances of the country deteriorated over last one decade, eventually leading to fiscal crisis in mid 2001. In the light of this, many research studies have been conducted on the finances of Sri Lanka. But, there are no works present that have actually measured and ranked the fiscal performance of the country. Hence, this paper is an attempt in this regard to evaluate as to how the various important fiscal parameters of the country have behaved in the last one-decade or so. The performance of the country on fiscal front is measured using a multidimensional composite index through which the country can be ranked for its performance for each year. This paper also makes an attempt to analyze the important aspects such as expenditure management, debt management and revenue raising efforts initiated by the country in the last one decade or so.