Sri Lanka’s China-backed Port City has expanded gross domestic product and helped in boost growth in 2017 growth to 6.5 percent from 4.5 percent as the statistics office updated the base year from 2010 to 2015 and included the reclaimed area.
“The value Added of land reclamation has been added to the GDP separately throughout the period of 2014-2018 in the GDP under the Construction activity,” the statistics office said.
“The value added of the total land reclamation has been added to the GDP according to the work done of the land reclamation in each year. This methodology is internationally recommended one and has been used by countries with this experience.
The bulk of the 269 hectare area has been reclaimed in 2017, the statistics,” office said.
The 2017 GD_ – a year the country suffered an output shock after the currency collapsed to 152 to the US dollar from 131 a year earlier – was increased to 6.5 percent from 4.5 percent.
The Port City drove up GDP with higher level of construction activity.
“In the year 2017 work done of reclaimed land is much higher than in other years,” the statistics office said.
“As a result, this variation is much higher in the year of 2017, when it compared to the other years. Hence, the published growth rate in the year 2017 has been changed significantly under the new base year estimates,” it also said.
