Yala safari...

the highest nominal income with an average Rs.104, 581 monthly income for a family while the lowest was recorded for Kilinochchi with an income of Rs.31,576.

This wider gap between the two districts is ample evidence of an apparent disparity in the income distribution across different regions of the country.

However the two numbers do not necessarily mean there is a vast divergence in the economic well being of the people in the two districts as one is urban and run on a fully market-based system while the other is largely a self-reliant rural agricultural economy.

In any case, the latter clearly lacks the economic opportunities capable of generating higher income.

The gini co-efficient, which is a widely used indicator to measure the income inequality, showed co-efficient of 0.45 in 2016 compared to 0.48 in 2012/13, pointing to a slight improvement in equality. But inequality gets deeper going from rural to estate sector.

The range of the gini co-efficient of zero indicates perfect equality and 1 indicates maximum inequality.

Sri Lanka’s liberal advocates call for financial devolution into the provinces, a quality of a federal state of governance, which gives sweeping powers to the provinces to collect taxes and spend them within the administrative region to enhance the economic well-being and personal income of the people within the province.

This creates higher accountability over the spending than blindly making an annual budget allocation to a province by the centre.

But the issue has sparked huge controversy among a wider section of the society due to the fears that the proposed new constitution, which proposes devolution of power within a unitary state, offers an easy route to separatist political groups.

There were numerous incidents recorded at many occasions of unrestrained safari jeeps playing mayhem in the Yala National Park as jeep drivers follow their own jungle law within the sanctuary.

Of the 200,000 MT rice called for, Sri Lanka expect 100,000 MT to arrive in Colombo by end November 2017 and the other 100,000 MT to arrive by end of December 2017.

The tender will close on October 30.