Assessment of the Intended Outcomes of the Newly Built Expressway in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to assess the achieved level of intended outcomes of the first expressway in Sri Lanka, focusing on the contributions of the industrial sector as a sustainable growth engine. The fixed effect estimation was based on a difference-in-difference framework. We found that the industrial sector value addition for the affected regions was greater than for the non-affected regions, i.e., by approximately 160 billion Sri Lankan rupees per annum, which accounts for 38% of the total impact on the regional gross domestic product (RGDP). The expressway induced 285 small and medium enterprises (SMEs), while the unemployment rate declined by 1.05% due the expressway.