Comparative Advantage of Service Exports of Sri Lanka

Abstract

The Export and Import Pol icy of Sri Lanka has both advantages and disadvantages. In Sri Lanka export and import policy led to unsymmetrical export portfolio which has continuously earned deficit trade balances. The main objective of this study is to identity international competiveness of Sri Lankan service exports. Revealed Symmetric Comparative Advantage Indices and Trade in Service Balance Index were employed in this paper. According to the findings of the paper, Sri Lanka was able to increase its comparative advantage from 2000 to 20 IO. However, comparative advantage in service sector has not increased compared to the commodity exports and is limited to the narrow service range. Therefore this paper concludes that service exports of Sri Lanka do not have significant comparative advantage in the world.