Has GSP Contributed to Poverty Reduction and Fostered ‘Sustainable Development’ in Sri Lanka?

Three core objectives of the GSP are poverty reduction, promotion of ‘sustainable development' and ‘good governance' in beneficiary countries. Though what ‘good governance' specifically means is defined clearly (ratification and effective implementation of 16 core conventions on human and labour rights and ratification and implementation of 11 conventions on good governance and environment), what constitutes ‘sustainable development' is defined loosely as meeting the Millennium Development Goals set in 2000 and the Johannesburg declaration of 2002. This paper proposes to primarily investigate whether GSP has reduced poverty and promoted sustainable development in Sri Lanka or not. Thus, good governance is not the focus of this paper though human rights and economics could be complementary to each other (see for example, Seymour and Pincus, 2008). In the recent past there have been lots of public debates in the media about the link between governance issues and the renewal of GSP facility. However, there is total lack of debate on the poverty reduction and sustainable development objectives of the GSP. It is this lacuna that this paper proposes to fill