From crisis to recovery: How CGIAR’s BRIGHT Survey can catalyze evidence-based policy reforms in Sri Lanka

Headey, Derek; van Asselt, Joanna; Ecker, Olivier; and Balié, Jean. 2024. From crisis to recovery: How CGIAR’s BRIGHT Survey can catalyze evidence-based policy reforms in Sri Lanka. Blog post. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://www.ifpri.org/blog/from-crisis-to-recovery-how-cgiars-bright-survey-can-catalyze-evidence-based-policy-reforms-in-sri-lanka/

As the American polymath W. Edwards Deming once famously said, “In God we trust; all others bring data.” Unfortunately, bringing data and evidence to policy deliberations has not always been the norm in Sri Lanka’s recent political history. From 2022 to the present, the country experienced the worst economic crisis since its independence—a crisis precipitated by policy decisions made without consideration of rigorous evidence or sound economic advice, including escalating government debt, depletion of foreign reserves, and a disastrous fertilizer import ban. Since late 2022, a bailout package by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and policy reforms have steadied Sri Lanka’s macroeconomy, though the ordinary citizen remains far poorer than she was before the crisis.

The arrival of a new government in late 2024 led by the reform-minded National People’s Power (NPP) party offers a promising opportunity for policymakers and researchers to contribute much more to rebuilding the Sri Lankan economy. A key new resource for those efforts is the BRIGHT (Building Resilience, Inclusive Growth, and Holistic Transformation) survey.