Sri Lanka
GDP per capita to 2060, by scenario
Constant-rate scenario path; the 2060 endpoint levels are illustrative, not forecasts.
Factor profile
Their exports are food, gold, diamonds, logistics or a small share of output, which AI neither threatens nor much boosts, so AI reaches them mainly through their own firms and governments.
How this economy meets AI
Today’s production, workforce and automation baseline — context for the scenarios, outside the AGI Growth Index.
Where output comes from (% of GDP)
Where people work (% of employment)
Informal employment
Current automation exposure
Several parts of the economy could transmit AI’s effects. The pace depends on adoption by firms, connectivity and movement of workers between sectors.
Sources: World Bank WDI; ILOSTAT; Global Automation Atlas (Garg, Crosta & Baier, 2026). The latest available year is shown for each measure; vintages differ, so shares may not sum to 100.
Where Sri Lanka starts
Sri Lanka enters the AGI era as a stalled middle: middling income, slow growth, and a gap to faster economies that widens each year. The scores show the shape. Physical build speed is 3.8 out of 5, its clear strength, resting on the Port of Colombo, one of the world's busiest transshipment hubs, and the assets built around it. But compute and energy access scores just 1, near the floor. Sri Lanka has almost no data center capacity, and its power grid failed during the 2022 crisis. Climate resilience at 1.2 and language inclusion at 1.3 are both weak. At roughly $5,002 GDP per person, with 22 million people, capital is scarce after a sovereign default. Ten-year trend growth of 1.3% a year reflects an economy still climbing out of that crisis.
The three paths
These are simulations, not forecasts. The Modest path is the baseline; the two AGI scenarios fork from it. Under the Modest scenario, AI stays a normal technology. Sri Lanka would barely move above trend: 1.4% growth a year, 136th of 157. Under Gradual takeoff, growth would build over two decades and reach 3% a year once AGI matures around 2045. Yet its rank would slip to 148th, because faster economies pull further ahead. An economy growing at 3% doubles in a little over 23 years. Under Fast takeoff, growth would reach 4.5% a year from the early 2030s, a doubling roughly every 16 years. Here Sri Lanka would climb to 131st, up 17 places, as a fast world rewards even modest build capacity. All three rates are low by regional and world standards. Politics could slow or redirect any path. How Sri Lankans and their government respond to transformative AI is a variable the model holds constant.
How you would know which world you are in
The three scenarios look almost the same until about 2030. Watch leading indicators, not GDP, and watch them live. Three global signals matter most. First, whether the METR task horizon curve keeps doubling every four to five months through 2027–28; METR publishes it at metr.org. Second, whether frontier lab revenue and capital spending keep compounding; Epoch AI tracks both at epoch.ai. Third, whether growth in the ten to twenty most-ready economies — the United States and China above all — breaks above trend in the early 2030s. Double-digit growth there within a couple of years of 2030 would signal a fast world. A point or two above trend by the mid-2030s would signal a gradual one. A fade back to trend would signal a modest one. Sri Lanka's own signals would arrive earlier than the GDP data: apparel order books at MAS and Brandix, transshipment volumes at the Port of Colombo, progress on the IMF program, and digital-services contracts won abroad.
If growth goes explosive
For Sri Lanka, explosive is the wrong word. Even under Fast takeoff, 4.5% growth a year is modest: the frontier would compound near 39%, and the region's median near 9%. This is relative decline against a world pulling away, not a leap. At 4.5%, the economy doubles roughly every 16 years, so a child born today would reach her mid-teens in a country twice as rich — real progress, but slow beside its peers. The gains would arrive imported and late, through cheaper software and services rather than a home-grown build. Faster growth and higher wages could ease the pressure that has driven skilled Sri Lankans abroad since 2022. There is a way this leaves Sri Lanka worse off. If it rents compute rather than owns it, and takes chip rules set in Washington or Beijing, its digital economy would sit on foundations others control — a risk sharpened by the Hambantota and Colombo Port City arrangements. The hedge is to diversify partners and own more of the stack. Either way, the pressure would fall on the state: the Central Bank under its IMF program, Ceylon Electricity Board, and Colombo's customs and courts.
What Sri Lanka can do now
Three levers follow from the scores, and two pay off whether or not AGI arrives. The first is AI diffusion capacity, low at 1.9. Digital skills, permissive deployment rules and digital government carry real weight even in the skeptic's world, so building them is a no-regret move a cautious government can start today. The second is geopolitical positioning, at 2. Holding to the IMF program, keeping access to capital markets and avoiding sanctions exposure matters now, after default, and matters more if AI raises the stakes on technology access. That too is no-regret. The third lever is the bet: compute and energy access, at 1, is Sri Lanka's weakest score and its largest lever under Fast takeoff, though it barely moves growth if AI stays ordinary. Closing it means fixing the grid and packaging power and land for investment. A $5,002-per-person economy cannot fund that alone. Sri Lanka can learn from a stalled-middle peer: Thailand drew cloud region investment from Google and Amazon by pairing reliable power with clear incentives. Open the atlas's policy editor to see how moving these scores shifts Sri Lanka's path under each scenario.
Use the policy editor to test how different factor scores change Sri Lanka’s modeled path. The roadmap builder below can then incorporate those targets into a 1,000-day planning prompt.
Drafted with Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, from the atlas’s data and an editorial template set by the author.
Create a 1000-day AGI and growth roadmap prompt
This prompt can be used with Claude, ChatGPT or an open-weight model hosted on your institution’s systems. It includes the atlas material for Sri Lanka: the country brief, economic structure, region, archetype and global scenarios. It instructs the model to ask for local information, use existing strategies and the political calendar, and preserve the atlas’s interpretation rules. The prompt is assembled in your browser; the information entered here is not sent elsewhere.
1 · Read the brief → 2 · Set targets in the policy editor → 3 · Generate and copy the prompt → 4 · Run it with an approved model, with high reasoning effort and web access where permitted
Instructions are generated in the selected language; the data annex remains in English. Translations are machine-drafted, and corrections from native speakers are welcome through the contact links on the start page.