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    The Economic Impact of Multinational Corporations on the Developing Countries: with special reference to South Asia
    (2nd International Studies Students’ Research Symposium – 2018, Department of International Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2018) Wickramasinghe, W.M.M.D.
    Multinational Corporations (MNCs) play an important role in the contemporary global economy. Therefore, it is a major issue in the process of economic development, especially in developing countries. The term "MNC” which includes corporations operating on the international and transnational level. Historically, MNCs are closely linked with colonialism and imperialism. In addition, MNCs originate in the industrialized countries and they have become the buzzword of globalization. Hence, this research explores the impact of MNCs effects on the economic situation of developing countries. The analysis is based on the case study with the selected sample; Unilever in Sri Lanka, Coca-Cola in India, KFC in Pakistan, and Chevron (petroleum industry) in Bangladesh. This research uses secondary data in order to identify economic effects and economic development by MNCs in developing countries, especially in South Asia. Moreover, it concerns host countries policy towards MNCs. As per the findings, developing countries adopted more open policies towards MNCs during the 1980s. Therefore, MNCs enter host countries by using different strategies such as FDI. Further, they always are profit-oriented and enjoy command over enormous financial resources for investment and their entry into developing countries make a transfer of funds from developed countries to developing countries. They generate employment, increase national income, and improve the managerial standards and entrepreneurial abilities of the host countries. However, they earn higher incomes, but the consumption of improved quality goods and services to people in poorer regions. Contrariwise, MNCs activities displace local producers and spoil small domestic enterprises. Because MNCs maintain huge cost for marketing more than production. Further, they do not give chance to any other domestic company to compete with them. Because they control the global economic market. In conclusion, this study highlights more benefits and relationship between MNCs and economic growth and development of developing countries. Therefore, the economic involvement of MNCs is important to South Asian countries as a developing region
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    Agricultural Globalization and Non Plantation Agriculture in Sri Lanka
    (Research Centre for Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Henegedara, G.M.
    Agriculture is still important as the backbone of the economy and it contributes 19 percent of export income while occupying 30 percent of the total labour force. Thus agriculture development has recognized as one of the dynamic sectors of the country that could be generated capital, raw materials, food and labour as advocated by Lewis’ model (1954). The non-plantation agricultural sector which includes paddy and other food crops cultivation is occupied by a large number of small producers and characterize with conventional technology and low productivity. The successive governments in Sri Lanka followed various strategic policy options to develop the food crop sector by opening up to foreign market, foreign capital and advanced technology through agricultural globalization. The focal point of agricultural globalization is to increase the production efficiency through the principle of comparative advantage. Thus it is expected to increase the production, employment and income of farming community and to increase the consumer welfare as well. The main objective of this paper is to review how agricultural globalization process has impacted on increasing agricultural production, income and the welfare of farming community. The methodology of the study was based on inductive method and secondary sources information were used. The study reveals that liberal policies that lead to agricultural globalization had made a positive impact on improving domestic food crop sector in Sri Lanka. Thus, domestic food production, productivity, food security and farm income have increased despite some negative impact on income distribution and net returns. However the overall impact would be positive and dynamic along with the rapid globalization process.
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    A Critical Reading of Environmental Kuznets Curve: CO2 Emissions in a Developing Country
    (Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2015) Tutulmaz, Onur
    Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) proposes a non-monotonic relationship between the environment and economic level. It also tries to define another important reduced relationship along with economic development. Therefore it has become an attraction for empirical studies giving reference for almost all the areas of the subject of the relationship between economy and environment. An important empirical area of the hypothesis is between CO2 emission which is a global emission and GDP per capita being the representative of economic development. The present and near future situations of the environmental pressure are evaluated by taking the CO2 emission as a representative of environmental pressure. Being directly connected to energy, CO2 emissions are generally evaluated differently than other emissions. Our study critically analyzes main confusions in the literature in terms of the interpretation of the EKC applications on developing countries using primarily example of estimates for Turkey‟s CO2 emissions. As for reduced form EKC time series analyses for Turkey, there are a few statistically robust analyses; and a main diversion cause from minor econometric analysis try to be clarified here. As to the physical emission values, it is not difficult to predict a short term rise for the carbon dioxide emission level. Particularly, Turkey, as a developing country with lower values is very likely to show further environmental pressure increase in terms of carbon dioxide emission in the short-term. On the other hand, we analyze the main point need to be cleared for a developing country EKC is evaluation of longrun attractor, referring to the cointegration concept Engle and Granger (1991) introduced, which hints the shape of long run relationship. Therefore, we attempt to unite the mathematics of the theory, use analytic investigation and the inferences of the econometric estimations to respond to critiques raised.
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    Expectations and Reality of Tourism Development: A Case Study on Unawatuna, from the South Coast Tourist Region of Sri Lanka.
    (University of Kelaniya, 2005) Guruge, K.G.
    During the nineteen sixties international tourism began to play an important role in the economy of the newly independent countries of Asia, Africa, and South Africa, and these countries embraced international tourism as a medium to overcome their economic ills, such as the acute shortage of foreign exchange, chronic unemployment and slow economic growth. In short, development of tourism was considered as the Passport to Development. Since 1967 Sri Lanka too has launched several measures to develop her tourist industry with the aim of achieving several objectives, such as creation of employment opportunities, generation of foreign exchange, development of peripheral areas. Tourism sector was expected to develop in an organized manner. But due to the urgency of meeting the expectations relied on tourism development, and also due to the profitability of this new area of economy, there was a big rush for investing in tourism development. Since the initiation of tourism development in Sri Lanka (in 1967), it was seen that peripheral regions were considered as potential areas for tourism development. With the introduction of tourism these regions have experienced positive as well as negative impacts, especially alone the south coast tourist region. The present paper is centered on analyzing the pros and cons of tourism development, in Unawatuna, located in the south coast tourist region of Sri Lanka. The rich environmental quality in the area has attracted most of the tourists who travelled beyond Galle, and within a time span of little more than two decades, Unawatuna has transformed into a very popular beach tourist destination.
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    Economic Development, Openness to Trade and Environmental Sustainability in Sri Lanka
    (University of Kelaniya, 2005) Alpay, S.
    Understanding the impact of economic development and trade liberalization policies on the environmental quality is becoming increasingly important as many environmental problems such as global warming, depletion of ozone layer have reached undesirable levels. Especially in developed countries sustainability of the environment is now among the priority policy items. As indicated in the very recent original report, Environmental Sustainability Index (2002), environmental sustainability can be thought to have five important dimensions: (1) the state of the environmental systems, such as air, soil, ecosystems and water; (2) the stresses on those systems, in the form of pollution and exploitation levels (reducing stresses); (3) the human vulnerability to environmental change in the form of loss of food resources or exposure to environmental diseases; (4) the social and institutional capacity to cope with environmental challenges; and (5) the ability to respond to the demands of global stewardship by cooperating in collective efforts to conserve international environmental resources such as the atmosphere. Then, environmental sustainability can be defined as the ability to produce high levels of performance on each of these dimensions in a lasting manner. Given this very important data set on the sustainability of the environment we are living in, we will try to identify present conditions of Sri Lanka as well as developed and developing countries, in a comparative way, with respect to overall environmental sustainability index together with the five core components listed above. As the data is provided in a disaggregated format, we will be able to provide interesting and important details not only regarding the current level of core components such as the state of environmental systems, stresses on this system, social and institutional capacity, but also regarding their subcomponents such as air and water quality, pesticide use, soil degradation, deforestation, basic human sustenance, science and technology capacity, civil and political liberties, international commitment etc.(there are 68 such variables). Additionally, the interactions between economic development, openness to international markets and the environmental sustainability in Sri Lanka will be identified comparatively. Understanding the impact of economic development and trade liberalization policies on the environmental quality is becoming increasingly important as general environmental concerns are making their way into main public policy agenda. This is especially important nowadays as the environmental consequences of human activities exceeded certain limits and cannot be considered as negligible. On the other hand, economic development and trade liberalization are among the top priority policies in Sri Lanka as in many other countries. Thus, it is worth studying environmental consequences of economic development and more openness to trade.
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    Agriculture Sector in Sri Lanka Fifty Years after Western Colonization: Impacts, Trends and Future Perspectives
    (University of Kelaniya, 2005) Mudalige, U.J.; Somarathne, M.
    Until western colonial powers impacted on Sri Lanka about five hundred years ago, it was considered as a subsistence agriculture-based economy with paddy as the major agricultural crop. The structure of the agricultural sector has, however, been changed during the period of colonization (1510 – 1948) and afterwards, i.e. post-colonization (1948 to date) with the introduction of plantation crops and severe structural changes took place in other sectors relatively faster that contribute much to the overall production, employment, and trade etc. in the country. The purpose of this study was to examine empirically the impact of so-called changes occurred in the agricultural and other sectors under the western colonial powers, especially under the British rule (1815 – 1948), on the overall national development of the country in the post-colonization era. It used the hypotheses made by Myint (1977) to develop the empirical model for analysis, i.e., agriculture sector of a country can promote its economic development by five distinct ways: (1) increasing the supply of food available for domestic consumption (food security); (2) releasing its labour for industrial development; (3) enlarging the size of the domestic market for the industrial sector; (4) increasing the supply of domestic savings from agriculture, and (5) providing the foreign exchange earned by agricultural exports. Using the secondary data for the period covering 1970 to 2003, a multiple regression analysis was carried out with appropriate variables to express these phenomena. The results suggest that there exists a significant impact of these factors on overall economic development of the country, especially in the areas of household food security, labor mobility, capital formulation, and marketing and trade of agricultural products. The results suggest that although the relative contribution of agriculture sector to overall economic development has been reduced over time, it is imperative to taking into account these trends and impacts that take place in agricultural sector extensively in the processes of developing appropriate policies, as it is the most sensitive sector in terms of the political economy of the country.