The present lowincome countries, when they have to struggle in this unsympathetic environment, need more understanding; greater allocations for funding and investment; increased direct aid flows; and tangible support and direct concessions to recognize satisfactory “compliance”. At this stage, I would like to acknowledge a step in the right direction that has been followed by some advanced countries through certain targeted schemes, such as the GSP+ scheme, which provides some welcome relief to low-income countries. Unfortunately however, even such concessions are often coupled with stringent criteria such as Rules of Origin which again adds to the ever growing list of “do’s and don’ts”, which list must be quite a nightmare for those who have to keep track of these! Of course all this has served to create a new breed of corporate executives titled, “Compliance Officers” (CO’s), who may at this rate, soon end up becoming even more important than CEO’s!! Your Excellencies, Honorable Ministers, Distinguished Guests, The Principle in relation to addressing income and wealth disparity among nations is equally applicable to societies within nations as well. Towards that end, I am pleased to announce to this distinguished audience that Sri Lanka has already developed a comprehensive policy framework “Mahinda Chintana”, based on the election manifesto submitted by President Mahinda Rajapaksa at the last Presidential Elections which addresses this issue comprehensively. This policy framework provides a sustainable development strategy designed to address growth and livelihood issues, while covering the income – disparity issue that prevails in our own country.
However, they have reached an affluent status today through their various actions and initiatives. Obviously therefore, as in the case of any successful outcome, we could learn from those case  BIS Review 83/2006  1  studies. In fact, we in Sri Lanka felt that we should do so professionally and objectively. We began by examining the economic and political environments in which many of the highly successful countries operated. We studied the external and internal conditions that prevailed during the early days of growth of those countries. We also attempted to analyze the factors which enabled those countries to break the shackles and reach a stable platform from where they launched themselves to the next level of development. In that exercise, one of our key findings was that, in the journey to reach developed and industrialized country status, many of those countries had immense space and flexibility to grow in an uninhibited environment. Further, when the present day rich countries were growing, (from per capita income of US dollars 1,000 to US dollars 10,000), they faced very few obstacles in the movement of capital and labour. They did not have to be overly concerned about human or labour rights. They were free to impose trade quotas and grant very visible and obvious subsidies to their local entrepreneurs and farmers. They were not subjected to stringent global standards for copyrights. They were not desperately worried about safeguarding the ozone layer or the environment.