Economic activity in most Lankan provinces languishes

The economic activity in most of Sri Lanka’s provinces had remained stagnant in 2018 as their contribution to the country’s GDP remained more or less unchanged, according to the data of the Statistics Department of the Central Bank.

Apart from the Western Province, the only other province that reported an increase in the provincial GDP (PGDP) share was the North Central Province.

The shares of the Central, Sabaragamuwa and Uva Provinces decreased in 2018, while the shares of the North Western, Southern, Eastern and Northern Provinces remained unchanged.
The Western Province continued to be the largest contributor to the economy, followed by the Central and North Western Provinces.

Services activities played a dominant role in all provinces with a contribution of more than 50 percent to the PGDP.

Transportation, wholesale and retail trade and other personal services activities were the key drivers of provincial services activities, which were in line with the trends observed in national GDP.

The contribution from industry activities to PGDP varied from 16.2 in the North Central Province to 32.8 percent in the Western Province. Construction, manufacture of food, beverages and tobacco products, manufacture of textiles, wearing apparel and leather-related products and mining and quarrying were the main contributors in most of the provinces.
Following the similar pattern of the sectoral performance in national GDP, the lowest contribution to the PGDP was from agriculture activities in all the provinces, ranging from 2.0 to 16.5 percent. 

The Eastern Province recorded the highest share of 16.5 percent, which was led by growing of rice, marine fishing and marine aquaculture and animal production.