Sri Lanka are mainly determined by internal factors. The level of military spending in the 1950s and 60s was not significant. With the jvp uprising in 1971, there was a marked increase, and the civil war between the government and the LTTE led to further significant increase of military expenditures.60 One obvious risk is that military expenditures crowd out other investments, which could have been of better use in terms of social and economic development. It can be seen from Table 1 below that military expenditures in Sri Lanka were much higher than expenditures for education and health during most of the past 18 years. When the cease-fire began in the beginning of the new millennium, there was a sharp decrease in military expenditures, and there was a simultaneous rise in the shares invested in education and health. When the war escalated again, the percentage of defence expenditures increased while there was stagnation or even decline in the shares devoted to the two social sectors.
Table 1 - Central Government Expenditures 1990-2008, Sri Lanka (selected)61
60 Edirisuriya, P. (1999) ”Determinants of Military Expenditure in Sri Lanka”, in Gamage & Watson (eds.) Conflict and Community in Contemporary Sri Lanka. ‘Pearl of the East’ or the ‘Island of Tears’? , Vijitha Yapa: Colombo, pp. 229-239. 61 Source: ADB (2009) Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 1009: Sri Lanka, downloaded from http://www. adb.org/Documents/Books/Key_Indicators/2009/pdf/sri.pdf (accessed 3/3 2010).
33