More food for thought for discussions on whether the emphasis should be on agriculture, which is said to employ the most people, or on services, which has the most potential.
Sri Lanka has generated 234,000 service sector jobs in the third quarter of 2009 from a year earlier, though 89,000 jobs were lost in industry, and 240,000 were lost in the farming sector, a government survey showed. The data does not include Sri Lanka’s Northern province, which had just emerged from a 30-year war.
The agriculture sector shrank 0.9 percent in the quarter, with paddy production falling 28.4 percent, though volumes were the second highest in the county’s history. The service sector grew 5.1 percent with hotels and tourism growing 20.6 percent.
