Annual Report 2005 - Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka

Executive Director’s Overview2005 marked two decades of operation of the IPS – fiveyears (1985-1989) as a project and 15 years (1990-2005)as an Institute. The Institute has made significantprogress over the two decades to become the apex body ofeconomic policy research in the country. 2005 was also a year ofconsolidation of the Institute’s research and supportprogrammes and minimizing all expansion activities. Thisdeliberate policy was put in place to make the requiredadjustments for the phasing out of funding from theGovernment of The Netherlands in 2006. The Institute becamefinancially autonomous from Dutch funding in early 2006.The adjustment of the Institute’s activities to face the newenvironment also led to streamlining of Research Units. SomeUnits had to face transition-related difficulties, in particular,the Health Policy Programme and the International EconomicsPolicy Unit consequent to the departure of some senior researchstaff members. Despite these set-backs, the Institute movedforward with its regular programmes intact and attracted a number of new projects that were in line with itscore research programme.The core research work was dominated by tsunami rehabilitation and related issues. The Institute releasedtwo reports on the tsunami during the year and one report was launched by the Hon. Prime Minister inDecember. The main focus in the IPS-State of the Economy Report in 2005 was also on tsunami rehabilitation.The institute attracted 24 new projects and completed 15 projects during the course of the year.Eleven publications were brought out during the year and with the two issues of the South Asia EconomicJournal (which is jointly produced with RIS, India), 13 publications were released. This is a record numbercompared to previous years. Two publications were on key areas of macroeconomics where hardly any researchhad been done for many years, viz., national accounts and input-output tables — the latter was the first properdocumentation of such tables after 1970.The Institute organized six workshops during the year, on the post-MFA experience of South Asian countries(jointly with FES, Colombo), MIMAP Annual Conference (with the International Development ResearchCentre, Canada, University of Laval, Canada, and De La Salle University, Philippines), post-tsunami recoveryissues (jointly with ADBI Tokyo), two on WTO and South Asia (with CUTS, India), and bilateralism andWTO-plus conditions (with UNDP Regional Centre in Colombo). The MIMAP conference was the largestever conference organized by the Institute where 130 delegates from overseas participated. The IPS has nowacquired the logistical strength and administrative capacity to organize major international workshops/seminars without any difficulty.Training of the Institute’s staff took place as during 2004. The IPS has always valued its human resourcesand thus gives priority for training despite financial constraints. The regular in-house and book review seriescontinued during the year which is detailed out in this report. By these in-house events, the Institute gives thetraining to the junior staff for public presentations and writing academic papers.3__________ Annual Report 2005