Sri Lanka 's experience with rules-based regulatory systems is linked to the liberalization of the economy in 1977, and the privatization of state enterprises in the ensuing years. The stated objective of regulation, voiced by successive policy regimes, is to ensure that distributional concerns are addressed in the reform process, whilst creating an environment conducive to private investment flows.

In practice however, the policies governing the regulatory process have been ad hoc and based on short-term political interests. No effort has been made to either carry out an objective evaluation of proposed regulations, or consider alternative regulatory options; the need to carry out speedy competition and regulation reforms in order to satisfy donor conditionality is cited as justification for the failure to introduce impact assessment mechanisms. As a result, regulation in Sri Lanka has been less than optimal, with deficiencies apparent at every stage of the process, from policy formulation to the legal and institutional structures. Clearly, it is time to take stock of the reform process.

The objective of this project was to develop a template for RIA in Sri Lanka in collaboration with our research partners at the Centre on Regulation and Competition (CRC), University of Manchester, and with an informal Working Group made up of key stakeholders from the policy and regulatory space, from the private sector, from the NGO community and from the media.

The short, medium and long term goals of the project were to: