Author: U. P. P. Serasinghe
AIT Library Call Number: AIT Thesis no.RD-00-22
Year: 2000
Academic Program: Regional and Rural Development Planning (RRDP)
Type: Thesis (M.Sc.) – Asian Institute of Technology, 2000
Examination Committee: B.W.E. Wickramanayake (Chairperson); Jayant Kumar Routray, Soparth Pongquan (Examination Committee Members)
Abstract: The Provincial Council system is a recent development strategy in Sri Lanka. It has been established with a broad view of balanced regional development. It expects to avoid problems associated with over-centralization of functions and responsibilities and to manage national development more effectively and efficiently. For this purpose, for the last 12 years, Provincial Councils have been handling an explicit role in relation to regional development and spending national resources on a regional basis. The Councils manage their functions and role within their own administrative structure and policy guidelines to achieve expected benefits. The study was undertaken to analyze the impact of the Provincial Council system on balanced regional development due to their development role, and form of expenditure and efficiency of the Provincial role, compared to the centralized system under the new structured administrative and institutional mechanism. The study examines the organizational structure and its nature and completeness to pursue a comprehensive role, legal, practical links and bottlenecks of functions. Meanwhile, it assesses the degree of effectiveness in regional development due to their degree of expenditure and pattern of financial utilization. The findings related to the newly organized Provincial administrative structure reveal that it is complicated due to a mixture of different institutions of the previous and new administrative mechanisms. In addition, some administrative complexities have appeared with incomplete functional and resources devolution and those impede the work. In the meantime, the role of regional governments is revealed as being extremely welfare-oriented. Unsuccessful cost-effectiveness due to financial utilization is another salient characteristic of the system. Therefore, some sound reforms in relation to administrative structure and financial utilization are needed for successful achievement of the aspirations.
Scholarship Donor(s): H.M. The Queen Scholarship
Note: A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science
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