The Nexus Between Foreign Direct Investment, Informal and Formal Sectors in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the bilateral relationship among formal, informal and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the case of Sri Lanka during the period from 1990 to 2019. Using annual time series data, the Two Stage Least Square method is employed to investigate the relationship among the endogenous variables. The results derived from the analysis suggest that the integration between formal and informal sectors and formal sector and FDI are positive and have significant impacts on each other. However, the negative and significant impacts of the informal sector and FDI on each other further suggest that the integration between the informal sector and FDI did not give an optimistic signal to the country to contemplate that the informal sector is supporting foreign investors. At the same time, a sign that FDI discourages informal sector progression in the results has triggered the attention of further investigations on whether foreign investment agglomeration in Sri Lanka promotes informal-formal sectoral transformation at the cost of the informal sector. However, this study proposes an interest in sound policy requirements to reshape the informal sector towards the interest of foreign direct investors and informal-formal sector transformation.JEL Codes: E26, F21, J21, J46