A new method of computation would be adopted in measuring the economic growth of the country, Deputy Minister of Policy Planning Dr. Harsha De Silva said today.

He said that the actual economic growth (GDP) in 2014 had been 4.5 per cent, while it was 3.4 per cent in 2013.

However, Dr. De Silva said he would not accuse anyone of misleading the public nor would he politicise the matter.

He said the economic growth was reduced according to the new computation method as some informal sectors that had been included had not experienced a significant growth.

“The country will follow the latest methodology used by many countries from now on in computing the economic growth,” he said.

“Sri Lanka has actually updated itself with the changing world with the adoption of this modern and realistic method of computing the economic growth,” he said last morning.

Dr. De Silva said that Cabinet approval had been obtained to move into the new method.

Giving a short description of the new method he said the year 2010 will be taken as the base year according to this method. According to the old method the base year was 2002.

He said a number of informal sectors of the economy would be taken into account when computing the economic growth according to the new method.

He claimed that the actual economic growth (GDP) in 2014 had been 4.5 per cent, and 3.4 per cent in 2013.

However, Dr. De Silva said he would not accuse anyone of lying or misleading the public.

He said the economic growth was reduced according to the new computation method as some informal sectors that had been included had not experienced a significant growth.

“I don’t accuse anyone of lying and do not expect to politicise this issue,” the Deputy Minister therefore said.

He assured that there won’t be any changes in ratings and adjustments of risk profile of Sri Lanka and thereby said Sri Lanka would be able to obtain credit on concessionary interest rates. (Yohan Perera, Chaturanga Pradeep)

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