It appears state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have risen in salience in Sri Lanka recently. I am giving a keynote address on this topic at the launch of the Advocata Institute. The slideset that I will be using is here.
The day before yesterday, I was debating on a TV talk show what should be done with the least defensible of the SOEs, the renationalized SriLankan Airlines and the misbegotten Mihin Lanka. It is interesting that the successful reform that I was associated with, telecom, keeps coming up in these discussions.
On May 17th, the Colombo University MBA Alumni Association has pulled together a panel to discuss the topic. I’ll be speaking at that too.
Hopefully, we will push thinking in the right direction through these discussions. At the talk show I think I was able to get the participating politicians, at least, to look beyond things like national pride and job security for the employees, at issues such as the logic of investing public money and imposing political decision making on inherently risk-laden activities such as running airlines. Facts such as the inefficiency of SriLankan with 333 employees per aircraft (behind only Syrian Air and Pakistan International Airlines) appeared to make an impact on at least those who do not buy into the labor theory of value (according to that politician, it is essential to have more employees to exploit, otherwise no value can be generated!). Accordingly, Syrian Air, with 400 employees per aircraft is the one to emulate.
2 Comments
Rohan Samarajiva
The Colombo University MBA Association unilaterally changed the schedule making it impossible for me to participate. So that one is off.
Instead I will be debating three politicians on at 2130 Tuesday (17th May) on Sirasa’s Satana, perhaps the highest rated political talk show in Sri Lanka.
Rohan Samarajiva
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wgDNHFwUtA is the link to the full panel discussion at the Advocata Launch on May 6th.
Sri Lanka at WAIC 2026: Aligning with a More Inclusive Vision for Global AI Governance
The World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) 2026 was held in Shanghai from 17–20 July and brought global attention to the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), as well as the increasingly important question of who gets to shape the rules governing it. This analysis examines the alignment between Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech and Sri Lanka’s Deputy Minister of Digital Economy Eng.
LIRNEasia Senior Research Manager Merl Chandana at NewsFirst Sri Lanka’s Face To Face Programme
LIRNEasia Senior Research Manager and Team Lead for Data, Algorithms, and Policy (DAP), Merl Chandana, was interviewed on NewsFirst Sri Lanka’s Face to Face programme on 9 August 2026. The interview focused on the wonders and dangers of Artificial Intelligence (AI), covering a recent cybersecurity incident where an experimental agentic AI model developed by OpenAI was manipulated to execute multiple attacks on Hugging Face.
More Than a Wheelchair: The Case for Mobility That Actually Works
The economic exclusion faced by people with mobility disabilities in Sri Lanka is substantial. Although Sri Lanka has made genuine investments in this area, yet, for many wheelchair users, the journey to work, school, university or a vocational training center remains difficult.
Links
User Login
Themes
Social
Twitter
Facebook
RSS Feed
Contact
9A 1/1, Balcombe Place
Colombo 08
Sri Lanka
+94 (0)11 267 1160
+94 (0)11 267 5212
info [at] lirneasia [dot] net
Copyright © 2026 LIRNEasia
a regional ICT policy and regulation think tank active across the Asia Pacific