Sri Lanka’s digital economy targets 5x growth: Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya

Keynote Speech by Chief Adviser to the President on Digital Economy Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya at Sri Lanka’s first-ever Data Privacy and Protection Summit 2025 organised by CICRA Holdings and Daily FT yesterday in Cinnamon Lakeside Colombo – Pix by Ruwan Walpola and Sameera Wijesinghe

• Speaking at Daily FT-CICRA Holdings organised first-ever Data Privacy and Protection Summit says five-year blueprint among other things aims at building trust, empowering citizens, and competing with world through digital excellence
• Stresses need for innovation-permissive regulation

By Janani Kandaramage 

Sri Lanka’s digital economy is on course for a significant leap, with a five-year blueprint aiming for a fivefold increase in digital GDP, a tripling in digital exports, and expanding the digital workforce said Chief Presidential Adviser on Digital Economy Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya yesterday.

Speaking at the first-ever Data Privacy and Protection Summit organised by the Daily FT and CICRA Holdings, Dr. Wijayasuriya outlined a trust-driven progressive strategy designed to position Sri Lanka as a global contender in the digital arena.

Outlining an ambitious blueprint, at the Summit attended by over 350 private and public sector personnel at Cinnamon Lakeside Colombo, Dr. Wijayasuriya said Sri Lanka’s digital economy—which currently accounts for around 3-4% of GDP—is expected to grow to over 15%, unlocking an economic potential of approximately $ 15 billion. The strategy also targets a threefold increase in digital exports and a doubling of the country’s digital workforce to over 200,000 people.

“We are aiming for a step change,” he said. “A five-year journey to increase our digital economy’s contribution from 3-4% to over 15%, translating into a $ 15 billion target.”

Beyond these absolute numbers, Dr. Wijayasuriya stressed the importance of relative positioning, pointing out that Sri Lanka currently sits in the third to fourth quartile in global digital readiness.

He added that the nation aims to progress into the second to third quartile by leveraging capability against global frameworks such as India’s CHIPS Index—Connect, Harness, Innovate, Protect, and Sustain. 

“The digital economy is not just about IT,” he remarked, noting, “It’s a whole-of-economy tool for macroeconomic acceleration. We’re a brownfield economy—already equipped with talent and legislative foundations. Now, the task is to horizontally connect and scale.”

A cornerstone of the blueprint is the development of nationwide digital public infrastructure—including a federated data exchange, unique digital identity, biometric authentication systems, e-lockers, verifiable credentials, and digital signatures (DigiSign), he asserted.

He noted that this new infrastructure will be open-source, Application Programing Interfaces (API)-driven, and designed to support a marketplace of services accessible to both public institutions and private developers. “We have strong digital foundations, but they’re siloed,” he said. “Now, we need interoperability and a shared architecture.”

Dr. Wijayasuriya described a future where Sri Lankan developers and startups could tap into core Government infrastructure through simple plug-in interfaces. “You don’t need to understand the entire electricity grid to plug in your kettle,” he opined.

“Likewise, developers don’t need to rebuild infrastructure—just connect through open APIs,” he explained, adding that these systems will cut development time, reduce costs, and scale digital services across healthcare, education, finance, and transport.

Ensuring inclusive access, the digital blueprint mandates the rollout of universal broadband, improvements in affordability and usage, and expanded digital literacy to all provinces.

In addition to technological development, the strategy includes a major shift in management drive across Ministries, civil service, and the private sector to guarantee organisational readiness. “Digital cannot be treated as an IT project—it’s a cultural and operational transformation across every domain,” Dr. Wijayasuriya said.

Dr. Wijayasuriya also emphasised that in the heart of this transformation lies the principle of trust.

“The Government is set to introduce a comprehensive legal framework including a new Digital Economy Act, updates to cyber security laws, and full implementation of the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA). Institutions such as the Digital Economy Authority (DEA), Cyber Security Authority, and the Data Protection Authority will provide policy direction, ensure legal compliance, and standardise plug-points to prevent fragmented development,” he noted. “Governance and trust—not cost arbitrage—are the new Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for global digital competitiveness,” Dr. Wijayasuriya observed, outlining that Sri Lanka must be regionally and globally competitive—not just locally.

He warned that unless the country strengthened its transparency architecture, it risked losing its talent to global markets and being bypassed by international investors. “If Sri Lanka wants to attract the majors, we must focus more on governance and less on just offering cheaper locations.”

Recognising the delicate balance between innovation and protection, the strategy embraces privacy and security by design, data minimisation, and federated architectures that keep data distributed rather than centralised.

He commended this approach for minimising risk while enhancing diversity, resilience, and control for data holders. The framework also sets clear policies on data classification, cloud sovereignty, and synthetic data use in Artificial Intelligence (AI)—preserving privacy without hindering innovation.

The need for innovation-permissive regulation was also highlighted, advocating for an incremental approach that extends from voluntary codes to formal laws. Techniques like sandboxing (trialling new technologies) and sunsetting (phasing out outdated systems) were encouraged to balance experimentation and compliance. “We must allow innovation to breathe and start with soft law and move gradually to formal codes and legislation.”

He acknowledged the shortage of local AI compute infrastructure, such as Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), as a bottleneck. To address this, the strategy proposes cloud-first solutions, data embassies, and hybrid multi-cloud models that cut costs while ensuring legal control and data protection. It also emphasises evidence-based governance, regulatory harmonisation, and shared compliance frameworks to ease institutional burdens and boost scale and trust.

“From a policy standpoint, the blueprint includes digital rights, ethical technology use, and robust internet governance frameworks. These are supported by institutional capacity-building programs, new legal standards, and reg-tech templates to help both regulators and businesses keep pace with rapid digitalisation.”

“Regulators must now be innovation-enablers,” Dr. Wijayasuriya added. “Poorly designed policies in the past had already stalled Sri Lanka’s digital momentum since 2010.”

The roadmap’s execution model is built on two guiding principles: horizontal integration and parallelism. He also warned that progress must be made simultaneously across infrastructure, legislation, governance, and citizen services, rather than one step at a time. “We are not starting from zero,” he reiterated. “We are a fertile brownfield. We have the talent, policy frameworks, and ambition. What we need now is coordination, execution, and scale.”

The digital economy blueprint further commits to empowering local innovation through initiatives like Code4Lanka, support for startups, enhanced digital exports, and modernising ERP systems for Government services.

Further, it sets out to modernise the public sector, streamline G2P (Government-to-Person) benefits, and integrate AI agents and bots into service delivery.

Underscoring the urgent need for stakeholder coordination, he highlighted that “the whole economy must shift—not just the tech sector. This is about building trust, empowering citizens, and competing with the world through digital excellence.”

With the blueprint now on the table, the onus is on public and private sector actors to align swiftly and act decisively. Sri Lanka’s digital future, it seems, is not just ambitious—but within reach, according to Dr. Wijayasuriya.

The full-day Summit brought together policymakers, regulators, industry leaders, and cyber security experts via keynotes and panel discussions highlighting critical issues surrounding data privacy, the PDPA, and best practices for safeguarding sensitive financial and consumer data.

Extending support to the inaugural Data Privacy and Protection Summit were Agility Innovation as Platinum Partner, and Mastercard and South Asia Technologies Ltd., as Gold Partners. Brand Communications Partner was MullenLowe Sri Lanka and Cinnamon Lakeside was the Hospitality Partner.