Sri Lanka's weaknesses in information technology can be summarized as the following:
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Telecommunication infrastructure will have to improve |
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Political problems could discourage foreign investment |
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Opposition to privatization by trade unions |
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Lack of sophisticated software |
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Currently Sri Lanka greatest weakness is the poor telecommunication infrastructure. Complete lack of telephone connections to some areas of the country is evidence of this. While Internet connections and email software is now readily available, the pricing puts them beyond the reach of a greater majority of the population.
Sri Lanka's eleven year ethnic rife with the LTTE terrorist infraction still continues to hinder the country's social, economic and political development. I strongly believe that until a solution is reached to solve the conflict Sri Lanka's journey forward on the path to high-tech success will be a slow and expensive venture.
It will be many years before Sri Lanka will probably be able to vision Bill Gateís ìa PC in every home, around the nation.î The government has made many of the necessary steps, both with legal policy to open doors to telecommunication and with fiscal backing. It promises 160,000 phone lines to the rural areas in the 1996-98 years. On the down side, Sri Lanka still has a very weak telecommunication infrastructure, certainly not attractive to firms using high-tech communications to stay in touch. This issue, coupled together with the violent political rives is still keeping business at bay from this otherwise highly lucrative emerging market. Culturally, corruption (bribes, price fixing, etc.) still occur, but government is taking major actions towards curbing this situation
