Sri Lanka is a developing country. Colombo abandoned statist economy policies and its import substitution trade policy for more market oriented policies, export oriented trade and encouragement of foreign investment in 1977. Although Sri Lanka is suffering from a brutal civil war since 1983, it showed a GDP growth average of 4.5% in the last ten years.

Sri Lanka’s major occupation is agriculture. The agricultural products include rice, sugarcane, grains, pulses, oilseed, spices, tea, rubber, coconut, milk, eggs, beef and fish.

Currently Sri Lanka’s most dynamic sectors are food processing, textiles and apparel, food and beverages, port construction, telecommunication, and insurance and banking. Export of plantation crops was 15%, while garments and textiles accounted more than 60% of the exports in 2006 making the textiles the biggest export of the country.

With the industries like processing agricultural commodities and garments and textiles, tourism has also emerged as an important industry in Sri Lanka in the last three decades.