ARS - 2006

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    An investigation of dividend policy behavior and information content of dividends in selected countries
    (University of Kelaniya, 2006) Peter, P.L.S.; Bamunuarachchi, G.K.
    Any company that essentially exists with the objective of maximizing the wealth of its shareholders is faced with the choice of either paying dividends now or reinvest now to pay later. This choice forms the background for the dividend policy decision that defines the time pattern of dividend payout. Numerous theoretical and empirical publications have kept dividend policy in its prominent status in corporate finance literature. Studies on dividend policy have been applied on companies listed in stock markets of both developed and developing countries. Employing meta-analysis that combines the results of several studies conducted on capital markets of a selected sample of countries, this paper analyses the dividend policy behavior of countries around the world in terms of dividend policy stability and the information content of dividend announcements. The paper concludes that the state of development of the country does have an impact on the dividend policy stability as companies in more matured markets in developed countries tend to maintain dividend stability although companies in emerging markets of developing countries have been unable to do so. On the other hand with respect to information content of dividend announcements it is evident that dividends have significant information content in all share markets and that on average all markets react negatively to surprise decreases in dividends which is more than proportionate to the positive reaction to surprise increases in dividends. Further it can be concluded that emerging markets take considerable time to fully incorporate information contained in dividend announcements while in mature markets it is less so. Mature markets tend to be more inline with the market efficiency hypothesis with respect to dividend announcements. As future research an investigation of dividend policy behavior and information content of dividends in a Sri Lankan context is to be conducted.
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    Impact of Banking Commissions on Sri Lankan Banking System
    (University of Kelaniya, 2006) Kumari, J.A.P.
    The transition from traditional feudal economy to a modern export - Import economy during the 1830s necessitated a modern banking sector in Sri Lanka. From the 1830s to 2005 Sri Lankan has experienced many changes in its banking sector and finally the country was able to cater to its economy with a well developed financial system. The objective of this paper is to analyses the role played by various government investigation commissions in bringing these development in the banking sector. From time to time Sri Lanka has appointed commissions to make recommendation about a particular section of the banking system or banking sector as a whole. Activities of three commissions appointed by the government, Pochkanawala Commission (1934), Exter Commission (1948) and the Presidential Commission on Finance and Banking (1992) formed the basis of this study Reports of the commissions, other related documents, historical records and parliamentary legislations were analyzed in order to evaluate the probable impact of the recommendations of these commissions. Findings of the study: 1.Bank of Ceylon and Agricultural and Industrial Credit Corporation were established on the recommendation of the First Banking Commission. 2. Central Bank of Sri Lanka was established based on the recommendations of the Exter Commission. 3. Recommendation of the Presidential Commission on Finance and Banking helped Sri Lanka to restructure Central Bank, other financial institutions, insurance industry, capital market and debt recovery legislations of Sri Lanka. 4. Some of the very important recommendations made by these commissions were not implemented 5. Reports of these commission provide an in depth analysis of the banking system of relevant periods.
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    Identification of Critical Success Factors for Large Scale Information Systems Implementation in Sri Lanka
    (University of Kelaniya, 2006) Wijayanayake, W.M.J.I.; Vithanage, D.K.A.
    Information is so crucial for the today’s business organizations existence. Most of them are moving towards the concept of digital firm or information centric business. Information therefore has become an important asset thus managing them in a proper way is considered as a high priority. Information systems (IS) have emerged to fulfill the need of them. Large businesses have very complex information requirements thus require complex IS namely “large scale IS”. During the last few decades many companies acquire large scale IS to gain competitive advantage. But the failure rate of enterprise systems as studied by the researchers were almost 70% and most of this IS failures resulted from poor implementation mechanisms adopted by the implementers. However, there has been not much research done to identify the factors that affect the implementation failures of large scale information systems in Sri Lanka. Therefore, it is worth studying and identifying the factors that affect the successful implementation of large scale IS in Sri Lanka. This paper focuses on developing and testing a model for successful large scale IS implementation by identifying critical success factors. A pilot survey was conducted initially to identify the critical factors for implementation success. For this, well reputed local and multinational companies’ top IT executives were surveyed. The analysis of gathered data reveals that the factors affecting the implementation of large scale IS can be distinctly categories in to six perspectives namely Individual, Task, Technology, Structure, Process & Environmental factors. Further analysis on data shows that these factors can again be overlook in two dimensions, factors affecting the pre-implementation stage and implementation stage. These six distinct categories were put in to four phases according to there priority of consideration. This research is only a beginning of a research effort that ultimately aimed to derive a framework for implementing large scale IS in business organizations in Sri Lanka.
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    A Visual Management System for Universities - A CASE STUDY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KELANIYA, SRI LANKA
    (University of Kelaniya, 2006) Sirisena, H.; Hewawitanagamage, U.R.; Munasinghe, J.; Sakalasooriya, N.; Kalansooriya, J.
    Expansion of the boundaries of human knowledge is the key to enhance the quality of civilizations. Knowledge results in systems. Systems, in turn, make better environments where human beings could maintain high standards of life. We all are aware of the famous saying of Munidasa Kumarathunga, the renowned Grammarian of Sinhala language and patriotic, which states that "A nation cannot achieve success unless new discoveries are made." (alut alut de notanana jaatiya lova nonagi). When we were students we had to face lots of difficulties within the university premises, due to lack of a proper system of visual management. When we became members of the staff as academics and administrative officers we faced more difficulties in regard to above mentioned matter. We experienced this problem specially, when a new batch of students enters the university. Also, in the recent past various fee levying Postgraduate and Diploma courses have been introduced by our faculties and thousands of external students have been registered for undergraduate degrees at CODL. As such, we are in need of a systematic way to handle this mass who interacts with our various academic and administrative departments/branches in the University. When we undertook our Postgraduate Degrees in various foreign countries such as India, Russia, Germany and United Kingdom etc., we have been inspired by the visual management systems displayed by their universities. Certainly they are applying their knowledge to the betterment of their own society. These thoughts inspired us and as a result we have made an attempt to introduce a visual management system for our university. We hope that this kind of visual management system can be applied to any university.
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    Adopting e-commerce based technologies in SMEs of developing countries
    (University of Kelaniya, 2006) Wickramarachchi, R.; Pathirana, B.S.V.
    Adopting e-commerce technologies would promise several benefits to small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) such as, access to wider range of markets, greater potential for partnerships and low cost etc. Also the competition in the global market and advances in Information Technology have made SMEs, not adopting e-commerce based technologies vulnerable to e-enabled firms. The benefits of using e-commerce may differ from country to country due to cultural differences and other factors such as per-capita income, computer literacy etc. Ease of use, relative advantage gained by e-enabled firms over the others, compatibility, and demonstrability of the results are viewed in different perspectives by developed and developing countries. Level of socio economic development would decide on the extent to which the firms are influenced by and usage of e-commerce. The objective of this article is to present the factors that influence the decisions of adopting e-commerce for SMEs, and develop a model for developing countries. A literature review was conducted using 40 research papers and model was developed by identifying widely cited factors. This model suggests 3 main influencing factors, namely: characteristics of the e-commerce solution, characteristics of the organization and characteristics of the external environment. As this is part of an on going research at department of Industrial Management, University of Kelaniya, it is expected to modify and validate the model identified in the Sri Lankan context.
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    The Galle District Economy in the Face of the Depression (1929-1933)
    (University of Kelaniya, 2006) de Silva, J.K.
    During the period under review the economy of Sri Lanka was sustained through plantation activities. Among them rubber, tea, coconuts and the by products of coconut such as copra, coconut oil, poonac, coir yarn etc. played a vital role in stregnthening the economy of the country. The demand for rubber became impressively higher due to the rapid development of the motor industry during and after the World War I. United States of America was the chief buyer of rubber. the great economic depression firstly occured in USA in 1929, had its repercussions in the primary producing ecnomics like Sri Lanka in general. This lead to a remporary halts in the gradual economic expansion that had been going on in Sri Lanka for about a hundred years. However the depression did not affected the economy of the Galle district compared to the rest of the country in general. The planataion in the Galle district developed in small holdings, managed by the planters themselves with the local labour and indegeneous capital. In this enviorment the Galle district planters had the advantage of their cultivation of alternative cash crops and the dependence on subsistance agriculture and in cottage industries making use of their available natural resources and the technical know-how. This led to a miracles recovery of the economy when the rest of the island was in a crisis. This paper examiners this situatiion in general and the recovery of Galle economy and its features during the period of the great depression.
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    Need of improving Human Resources in health through ICT
    (University of Kelaniya, 2006) Wickramasinghe, C.N.; Ranasinghe, D.N.
    Ever since the emergence of human being on this earth “Health Care” has evolved and developed substantially. Caring health of people is so crucial that substantial proportion of government budget and individual out of pocket expenditure accounts for health care. Health standards measured by health indicators such as life expectancy at birth, infant mortality rate and maternal mortality rate do not increase proportionately to increments in expenditure on health. Countries like Singapore and Republic of Korea have achieved health standards closer to developed countries even though their expenditure on health is not as much as developed nations. Previous researches and surveys have found that this is due to level of education, life styles, foreign aid etc. This study evaluates the importance of human resources of health over and above financial and physical resources in improving health standards. Further increment of proportion of GDP spent on health is intolerable, alternative ways have to found. The study also looks into the opportunities available for utilising ICT in improving health standards by providing access to HR to large community. By analysing developed and developing countries it was found that there is a very significant positive relationship between number of physicians, nurses and other HR and life expectancy and significant negative relationship between expenditure and infant mortality and maternal mortality. Study revealed a significant relationship between access to clean water and sanitation and health standards. It is concluded that HR matters a lot more in improving health standards that financial and physical resources. Increasing human resources takes a long time therefore other measures have to be taken to improve health standards. It is suggested that usage of concepts like e-health and telemedicine will remedy the issue.
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    Downward Transitional Areas of Rapidly Changing Regions: The Development of Backwardness in the Rural Peripheries of the Gampaha District a case study
    (University of Kelaniya, 2006) Sakalasooriya, N.
    Regional disparity of development has been the focus of many discussions on development issues in the developing world during the past four decades. The economic growth and modernization are skewed in favour of the metropolitan core area in the Western Province of SriLanka, due to numerous historical and geographical factors. The widening inequalities at local levels have caused disintegration of socio economic system even within fast changing areas like the Gampaha district of SriLanka. The present paper is an analysis of the prevailing spatial inequality of development in the District and an exploration into causes and consequences underdevelopment of peripheral rural areas. These ongoing socio-economic processes have generated internal inequalities of the development in the district. Within the district, DS Divisions of Mirigama, Attanagalla, Weke and Divulapaitiya, Which remain as relatively backward and stagnating, amidst the growing urban and industrial sector in the Western part of the area, will be the foci of the study. The weakening of the agricultural base in the district as a whole was experienced during the last few decades. However, the dependency on small farm sector in certain areas has been a major characteristic of the economy. The weak backward linkages and insufficient services and poor infrastructure facilities are attributable to the prevailing backwardness in these study areas, according to the survey. This study closely observed micro-level variations in the villages of Akaragama East, Radwadunnna Pahala, Ethaudakanda and Kirimatiyawatta, with special reference reference to spatial patterns of poverty, migration, land tenure, caste and employment structure that are related with the peripheral backwardness. Land use changes associated with industrialization and suburban growth and concentration of services into few centers are among key areas of the discussion. Validity of available theoretical and empirical knowledge in explaining ongoing spatial changes in the study areas are evaluated in the conclusion.
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    Value Addition in Sri Lanka Tea Industry
    (University of Kelaniya, 2006) Gayani, I.V.E.
    From the inception of tea industry in Sri Lanka, Country's tea exports were in the form of orthodox tea and exported bulk. Low prices, loss of income and the discrepancy in the prices between export prices and retail prices are the results of the bulk export of tea. Value added tea export will increase Sri Lanka's export income and competitiveness of the tea industry. The objective of this study is to investigate the development of value addition in Sri Lankan tea industry during the period from 1977 to 2005. Secondary data from the Tea Board, Customs and Central Bank of Sri Lanka have been used for the study. World Bank and IMF annual reports and other literature were used to obtain world market statistics. Research findings reveal that the retail prices of the world market is several times higher than the Sri Lanka's tea export prices. Value addition, such as production of tea bags in the importing countries is the reason for the price differences. Export of value added tea improved significantly since 1977 until 1996 and thereafter fell marginally, however, in 2005 it again showed an increase and even established a record in the quantity exported as value added tea, but could not match the proportion of value added tea achieved in1977, in the total exports. There is a vast potential to increase the prices of Sri Lanka's tea exports by value addition but Sri Lanka is not fully prepared for those changes to date.
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    A tool for automatic segmentation of a given Sinhala text into Syllables for Speech synthesis and Speech recognition
    (University of Kelaniya, 2006) Kumara, K.H.; Dias, N.G.J.; Sirisena, H.
    In the present era of human computer interaction, the educationally under privileged and the rural communities of Sri Lanka are being deprived of technologies that pervade the growing interconnected web of computers and communications. One good solution for this problem would be computers talking to the common man in the language he is comfortable to communicate in. Sri Lankan population has a significant percentage of people who are educationally under-privileged. On one hand we claim that to build an EGovernment or an E-Society in Sri Lanka on the other hand, the advances we make are totally inaccessible by a large number of people in Sri Lanka. Under such circumstances, we cannot expect rural/educationally under-privileged people to use computers and IT products unless we remove the need of being literate, which exists as a barrier between them and computers. However, the interaction between the computer and the user is largely through keyboard and screen-oriented systems. In the current Sri Lankan context, this restricts the usage of computers to a miniscule fraction of the population, who are both computer-literate and conversant with written English. In order to enable a wider proportion of population to benefit from Information technology, there is a dire need for an interface other than keyboard and screen-interface that is widely in use at present. Speech technologies promise to be the next generation user interface. Software applications having speech and voice recognition abilities have a better chance to communicate with a large percentage of population which include educationally underprivileged, visually challenged and computer illiterates, if these applications can speak and understand the native language. It is well known that the transcription of orthographic words into syllables is one of the principal steps of a syllable based Speech synthesis and Speech recognition. Hence we put forward a dictionary based automatic syllabification tool for Speech Synthesis and Automatic Speech Recognition in Sinhala language. Also it is capable to provide the frequency distributions of Vowels, Consonants and Syllables of given Sinhala text. Although there is no universal agreement for syllable definition, in this research our syllable definition can be considered as Cn 0 V n 1 Cn 0 where Cn 0 signifies 0 to n consonants and V n 1 signifies 1 to n vowels. In this tool, detection of Syllable boundaries for a given Sinhala sentence is achieved by four main phases: (1) Reformat everything encountered (e.g. digits, abbreviations) into words and punctuation.(2) Derive a phonemic representation for each word. (3) Determine the C n 0 V n 1 units for a given word. (4) Reformat above Cn 0 V n 1 units according to the Cn 0 V n 1 Cn 0 definition in order to obtain the syllable boundaries. Following example will give a better explanation of the algorithm.
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    Trends in Capital Intensity in the Manufacturing Industry in Sri Lanka and their Impact on Employment Generation
    (University of Kelaniya, 2006) Patabendige, A.J.
    considered much more capital-intensive than would be predicted on the basis of the knowledge of their factor endowments (Thirlwall, 2003). Accordingly, prevailing techniques of production in developing countries might be regarded as more capital intensive or inappropriate, and have exceedingly contributed to remain unemployment high in the countries like Sri Lanka. For example, one out of ten in the labour force is currently unemployed in Sri Lanka. Besides, Sri Lanka’s rate of unemployment remains at a higher level than most of the countries in the South and the South East Asian region which follow similar policies to those of Sri Lanka (WER, 2001). Stewart (1974) estimated that the appropriate capital stock per person in the United State was eight times that of Brazil, 20 times that of Sri Lanka, and over 45 times that of Nigeria and India. These figures show that capital intensity in the Sri Lankan industries was more than twice that of Nigeria and India in the early 1970s. Karunatilake (1987) reports that Sri Lanka’s public sector was 10 times more capital-intensive than the private sector in the 1970s. Five Year plan (1972-76) attributes unemployment at that time to a higher capital intensity maintained by the public and the private sectors. Such capital intensity is considered as a direct consequence of factor market distortions which were emerged as a result of following dirigiste policies for a long period of about 2 decades until 1977. Agarwala’s (1983) study on ‘Price Distortion and Growth’ of 31 developing countries confirmed the fact that the capital market was highly distorted in Sri Lanka in the 1970s. In this setting, the paper examines how far the rigor of distortions has been reduced by economic liberalization introduced from 1977 onwards to assess particularly the manufacturing industrial sector’s labour absorption and its strength to reduce unemployment in Sri Lanka. The study guided by the review of relevant literature (McKinnon, 1989; Kruger, 1983; Shaw, 1973) identified two major sources of capital market distortions, namely the practice of following a policy of controlled interest rates and maintaining overvalued exchange rates during an era of two decades from the late 1950s. In this setting, the study aimed at determining the impact of the 1977 economic reforms towards market liberalization on the reduction of the severity of these major sources of distortions. Based on this methodology the study estimated real interest rate behaviour and investigated into the behaviour of exchange rate for the reform period. Accordingly, the study found that in the controlled era before 1977, all deposit and lending rates remained at a very low level, resulting in negative real interest rates. This situation highly distorted capital market and made the price of capital (machinery) low, which resulted in increasing capital intensity in manufacturing and thereby limiting employment creation. However, after the adjustment of interest rates towards market rates as a part of the 1977 financial market reforms the real interest rate began to show positive values in most of the years in the ensuing period, except in few years. This phenomenon shows that rigor of capital market distortions arisen from negative real interest rates has reduced some what in the reform period. On the other hand, the real value of the domestic currency in relation to the major currencies with which Sri Lanka mostly transacts has changed over the period. During the controlled era before 1977 the rupee was comparatively overvalued against all the major currencies. After the major devaluations in 1977 and 1989 under the reforms, it reached a more real value. However, most of the other years the real value of the exchange rate started to appreciate, mainly on account of the government’s inability to preserve economic stability. As a whole, the study finds that the measures taken to liberalise the financial market from 1977 onwards have become somewhat effective in making real interest rates positive for most of the years, and supportive to reduce capital intensity to a certain extent in the reform period. But quite contrary to this, the appreciation in real exchange rate in most of the years during the reform period largely limited the success arisen from financial market liberalization to reduce capital intensity. Thus, the study concludes that overvalued real exchange rates in most of the years and having negative real interest rates in some years in the reform period have not contributed considerably to reduce capital intensity which made the importation of machinery and capital equipment still cheaper, and by this means labour absorption has been retarded, particularly in the manufacturing industrial sector even after the 1977 economic reforms.
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    Heritage tourism: complexities of land management and archaeological presentation
    (University of Kelaniya, 2006) Gunawardhana, P.; Adikari, G.; Hathurusinghe, S.; Katugampola, M.; Bandara, N.; Namalgamuwa, H.; Wijesuriya, D.
    Ibbankatuwa is possibly the best-known megalithic burial site in Sri Lanka where can be attractive to, and capable of appreciation. It has grate potentiality to foster tourism. The massive heritage site, built in 700 BC is great significance. Ibbankatuwa and its environs is perhaps the most numinous and archaeologically sensitive region which is a major tourist destination. Most importantly, locating two World heritage sites such as Sigiriya and Dambulla are playing a key role within the zone. It is obvious that the maintenance of a massive land area, social life of the people within the land and archaeological presentation of the site are the major problems currently associated with Ibbankatuwa which needs to be managed. It is significant to secure the preservation of the site to promote the enhancement of the character and the appearance of the environs (Boniface and Fowler, 1993). Moreover, there are complexities of land ownership, land use and land management which have to be considered as a whole. More than ten hectares of land owned by the Archaeology Survey Department where twenty families are residing but they are not allowed to build permanent houses. Apart from that open land is used for agricultural purposes; basically the cultivation of grain and banana but these interventions also brings its problems to the heritage site. It is clear that the archaeological presentation in a formidable form is necessary to attract the tourists. The aim of this paper is to discuss the problems of the site and to provide suggestions for promotion to tourist attraction. The creation of the project planning at Ibbankatuwa on the basis of the cultural, tourist, recreational and educational asset would minimize destructions to the site and earn a substantial annual income for the country.
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