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    SAARC — From Association to Community: a Small Country Economic Perspective
    (1999) Kelegama, Saman
    This essay has given a small country perspective of SAFTA and a more advanced level of economic cooperation in the region. The essay identified four broad areas as major areas of concern for a small member country: (a) political commitment; (b) market access; (c) safeguarding domestic producers; and (c~ trade and investment supporting policies. The concerns in these areas have to be effectively addressed in order to reap the benefits of a PTA or FTA. At present, the domestic policy support for SAFTA remains lukewarm. As long as this is the case, initiatives by the political establishment for regional cooperation will continue to be ambiguous, sporadic, and fragmented, leading to a ’stop and go’ pattern of regional cooperation in SAARC. In such patterns of cooperation, SAARC growth in terms of regional institutional development and programme implementation will remain uncertain, and the organisation’s life cycle will oscillate between short-lived euphoria and agonisingly protracted stalemates.
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    China–Sri Lanka Economic Relations: An Overview
    (2014) Kelegama, Saman
    This article fills a gap in the literature by focusing on the growing economic links between China and Sri Lanka. Starting from the 1952 Rubber-Rice Pact, the economic relations between the two countries have grown over the years with an unprecedented growth since 2005. Chinese military assistance helped overcome three decades of conflict in North/East Sri Lanka and Chinese financial assistance to other areas of the Sri Lankan economy, in particular, infrastructure development have also strengthened. Although Sri Lanka’s trade and investment links with China are not very strong, the increased Chinese financial assistance has had some spill over effects in strengthening these in recent years. Sri Lanka will sign a Free Trade Agreement with China most probably in 2014 but growing economic relations with China present both opportunities and challenges to Sri Lanka.
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    Regionalism Debate: Repositioning SAFTA
    (2005) Kelegama, Saman; Adhikari, Ratnakar
    Critics have pointed out that there is no rationale for a Regional Trade Agreement (RTA) in South Asia because there are limited complementarities in the region; major trading partners of the individual South Asian countries are located in the West etc. The latest World Bank report on the South Asia’s trade argues that an RTA in South Asia will lead to substantial trade diversion than trade creation and considers an RTA in the region as a stumbling bloc to multilateral trade liberalization. This argument needs re-examination and for this purpose it will be worthwhile first to revisit the theoretical debate on regionalism. This is done in the Section II followed by a discussion in Section III on the South Asian perspective of an RTA. Some concluding remarks are made in Section IV.
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    The Bilateral Track: The Case of the India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement
    (2006) Kelegama, Saman
    The India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement (ISLFTA) shows how bilateral cooperation can lead the way for regional cooperation. In operation, it has led to the rapid growth and diversification of Sri Lanka’s exports to and imports from India. India’s investment in Sri Lanka has also increased; India is now the second largest investor in Sri Lanka; and service sector cooperation has followed the growth of trade and investment. There were problems along the way but they were resolved. Moreover, this economic cooperation has overshadowed whatever political problems there were in the past. Now a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement is expected to come into operation by the end of December 2006. The ISLFTA dispels the myth that economic cooperation between a large and small country benefits only the large country. Dormant complementarities can be invigorated through a bilateral free trade agreement, and new comparative advantages can be discovered, further stimulating trade.
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    SAPTA and Its Future
    (Sage, 1996) Kelegama, Saman
    This paper is structured in a way that first section gives the background to SAPTA. Section 2 examines the impediments to the progress of SAPTA and the validity of the preferential trade assumption to South Asia. Section 3 examines the international experience with preferential trading arrangements. The next section looks at policy options for more effective economic cooperation among SAARC countries. Some concluding remarks are given in the last section.