Covid-19: Economic Impacts On Sri Lanka

COVID-19 has been rapidly outreaching across the globe, taking thousands of lives and pausing hundreds of economies.

- N.P. Ravindra Deyshappriya

Its initial impact on China’s economy is pathetic and China’s slowdown may have adverse economic impacts on the rest of the world as well.

This article examines the impact of COVID-19 on the Sri Lankan economy, focusing on the sectors such as national output and employment, tourism, exchange rate and financial market and social and welfare.

Introduction

Despite the global health condition, which has been supported by global agendas such as Millennium Development Goals (MDSs), Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and international organisations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), has improved considerably over past few decades, outbreak of critical illnesses cannot be fully controlled yet.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012 can be recognised as epidemics in recent history and the most recent outbreak is the new coronavirus disease, known as COVID19, which was first identified in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China (PRC), in early January 2020.

As scientists confirmed, COVID-19 also belongs to the same family of coronaviruses, which caused SARS and MERS in 2003 and 2012, respectively. However, the mortality rate of COVID-19 is approximately 4.3 percent (as of March 24, 2020), which still is significantly lower than that of SARS (10 percent) and MERS (34 percent).

Nevertheless, the infection rate of COVID19 (1.5 percent-3.5 percent) outnumbered that of SARS and MERS and also Ebola. The total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 has been rapidly increasing in China initially and then rest of the countries as well.

In fact, the confirmed number of cases has already surpassed the total of SARS and by end-February 2020 and currently there are 394,605 (as of March 24, 2020) confirmed cases across 196 countries with a death toll of 17,226 (as of March 24, 2020).