Word: lanka
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...taken more than 30 years for Sri Lanka to find that out. After gaining independence from Britain in 1948, the country set up a welfare state that paid tangible dividends. Because of its free medical and educational programs, Sri Lanka today has one of the highest life ex pectancy and adult literacy rates in the developing world. But from the 1950s onward, socialist governments imposed increasingly stiff taxes on business to finance a maze of nationalized enterprises and a complex web of regulations that controlled everything from trade to foreign exchange...
...early 1970s, the government seized the tea plantations that long generated about half the nation's export earnings. The result was a disaster. The plantations became run down as reinvestment was cut back, periodic replanting was stopped, and fertilizers were not applied. Production of Sri Lanka's three major exports (tea, rubber and coconut) plunged. Foreign investment dropped, and price and import controls created such shortages that city dwellers lined up to buy the simplest necessities...
...then socialist government of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (in coalition with the Communists and Trotskyists) was so discredited by 1977 that Jayawardene entered the election campaign daring to say nice things about foreign investment. When opponents condemned him as the "high priest of capitalism," Jayawardene blithely replied: "Let the robber barons come." Though his United National Party won that election by a landslide and last month again sent his political opponents down to defeat in local elections, he must still tread cautiously. The lifting of controls and the doubling of economic growth to 6%, together with higher oil prices...
...government's success will be determined largely by two key undertakings: >As part of an assault on unemployment, Sri Lanka plans to build five major dams and reservoirs over the next six years. The $1.2 billion project, more than half financed by foreign aid, will employ 225,000 workers and add greatly to electricity generation and farm irrigation...
...part of its open-door policy toward foreign investment, Sri Lanka has established a free-trade zone north of Colombo, where investors can be granted exemption from import duties and taxes...