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Documented examples

Each record describes something a country built that the indicators do not capture. The source provides the published number; the mechanism is our interpretation.

Scores describe outcomes. These records describe how a country acted, what it needed and what happened. 863 of 863 records include a mechanism. They do not affect scores.

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5 of 863 deliveries

Coordination

1 delivery linked to Public-private collaboration.

Sri Lankasince 1999still operatingbears on Public-private collaboration

Colombo port container terminal concessions, SAGT and CICT

The Sri Lanka Ports Authority let two privately led terminal companies in which it holds equity, South Asia Gateway Terminals (development began 1999) and Colombo International Container Terminal (South Container Terminal agreement signed 2011), operate container berths in the Port of Colombo, and in 2024 they handled 2,025,840 and 3,353,067 TEUs, 5.38 million of the port's record 7,792,069 TEUs.

2,025,840 TEU, container throughput, south asia gateway terminals, 2024. 3,353,067 TEU, container throughput, colombo international container terminal, 2024. Sri Lanka Ports Authority, Annual Report 2024, container throughput of Port of Colombo by terminal, retrieved 2026-10-17.

The move, and what it needed

The Sri Lanka Ports Authority kept the land and a minority equity stake and let private terminal companies finance, build and run container berths against royalties and lease rent, then added each new terminal to the same port rather than to a rival one.

Preconditions

  • A port authority that keeps landlord rights and a revenue share
  • A location on the main East-West shipping lane that carriers want to call at
  • Private partners that bring both capital and shipping-line cargo

Where else it has been used: The SLPA repeated the structure for West Container Terminal I, a 35-year BOT with Adani Ports and John Keells signed in 2021 and 2022.

Limits: The figures sit in a 177-page PDF, which the SLPA publishes about its own port, and the 5.38 million combined figure is the sum of the two terminal totals, not a number the report prints. Throughput is about 81 percent transshipment, so it measures Colombo's role as a regional hub for shipping lines more than delivery to Sri Lankan importers and exporters. The report does not restate the concession terms; the joint structure is visible only through the SLPA's equity holdings in both companies and the royalties and lease rent it books from them. CICT's private partner is China Merchants Port, a foreign state-owned group, so a hostile reader can call it a foreign investment with a local landlord. 1999 is the year SAGT development began according to the SLPA chronology, not the first year of operations. The record says nothing about tariffs, efficiency against the SLPA's own terminals, which handled 2,413,162 TEUs, or the value Sri Lanka captured.

Learning

1 delivery linked to Adult learning participation.

Sri Lankasince 1995still operatingbears on Adult learning participation

Vocational Training Authority of Sri Lanka

The Vocational Training Authority of Sri Lanka, set up under Act No 12 of 1995, took in 34,999 trainees in 2022 through 212 training centres across the island, against 37,936 in 2019, according to its annual reports tabled in Parliament.

34,999 trainees, trainees taken into full-time and part-time vocational courses, 2022. 37,936 trainees, trainees taken into vocational courses in 2019, the highest year in the 2017 to 2022 reports, 2019. Vocational Training Authority of Sri Lanka, Annual Report 2022, as tabled in the Parliament of Sri Lanka, retrieved 2026-10-17.

The move, and what it needed

Parliament created a statutory training authority, and the authority runs a fixed national network of national, district and regional centres that enrol school leavers and adults in short full-time and part-time courses certified against the national vocational qualification framework.

Preconditions

  • A national vocational qualification framework that the authority's courses certify against
  • A network of centres down to regional level, built and funded through the line ministry
  • Enough paid instructors to open the planned courses, which is the constraint the 2022 report names

Limits: The figure is an intake count the authority reports about itself, read from a 42 MB PDF, and not the share of adults in education and training that the indicator defines: 34,999 is a small fraction of one percent of Sri Lanka's adult population. The authority describes its trainees as youth, mostly school leavers, so the count sits closer to initial vocational training than to learning by adults already in work. Intake is not completion: the same report counts 22,003 completions in 2022. The reports restate their own series (2020 appears as 24,705, 23,455 and 23,417 in successive reports, 2021 as 33,416 and 33,431). Intake ran well below plan: 83 percent of target in 2022, 120 courses not started because instructors could not be recruited, and 33,416 against a planned 58,585 in 2021. The fall from 37,936 in 2019 is about eight percent and follows the 2020 pandemic trough, so it reads as a shortfall on a running delivery and not as a reversal. The 2019 peak comes from a separate annual report (https://www.parliament.lk/uploads/documents/paperspresented/1683183407035072.pdf). The authority is one of several public training bodies, beside NAITA and the technical colleges, so it does not cover the national system.

Adaptability

2 deliveries linked to Institutional responsiveness, Disaster preparedness and recovery.

Sri Lankasince 2022delivered and closedbears on Institutional responsiveness

Emergency cash transfer top-ups after the 2022 default

After Sri Lanka suspended external debt service on 12 April 2022, the government topped up Samurdhi and categorical cash transfers to Rs 5,000 to 7,500 per family per month from May to December 2022 for 2.5 million existing recipients and 0.8 million waitlisted recipients, raising spending on these programmes to Rs 142 billion in 2022.

3.3 million recipients, recipients of crisis top-up or additional cash transfers, may to december 2022 (2.5 million existing plus 0.8 million waitlisted), 2022-12. 142 billion Sri Lankan rupees (0.6 percent of GDP), spending on the four main social safety net programmes in 2022, 2022. International Monetary Fund, Country Report No. 23/116, Sri Lanka: Request for an Extended Arrangement Under the Extended Fund Facility (staff report and Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies), retrieved 2026-10-02.

The move, and what it needed

The government used the existing Samurdhi and categorical allowance rolls, plus the waiting list of households already screened but not enrolled, to add a flat monthly top-up within weeks of the debt standstill, with multilateral emergency loans paying for it.

Preconditions

  • Existing transfer rolls and a waiting list of pre-screened households
  • Emergency multilateral financing available within weeks of a default
  • Payment channels that kept working during the 2022 fuel shortages

Limits: The recipient counts and the Rs 142 billion are the government's own statement in its Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (attached to the Letter of Intent of 6 March 2023), published by the IMF, not an IMF measurement; the 3.3 million is our sum of the 2.5 and 0.8 million, which the staff report also gives as about 3.3 million beneficiaries at end-2022. The eLibrary HTML has no page numbers. The top-ups were financed by emergency assistance from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, so the speed reflects donor money as well as the government's decision. The source gives the months, not the date of first payment, so the elapsed time from the April 2022 debt standstill to payment is known only to within a month or two. The staff report itself says the real value of cash transfers eroded in 2022, with poorer households facing higher inflation, and that Samurdhi targeting was poor (38 percent of the poorest quintile covered in 2019, 12 percent of the richest receiving transfers), so the speed of the top-up does not show that the money reached the right households. The 2023 replacement of Samurdhi by the Aswesuma scheme is a separate, slower reform and is not covered here.

Sri Lankasince 2005delivered and closedbears on Disaster preparedness and recovery

Owner-driven housing reconstruction after the 2004 tsunami

Sri Lanka's government paid owner-driven cash grants through two state banks, with IDA refinancing, to 47,864 Phase I beneficiaries after the December 2004 tsunami, of whom a 100 percent audit found 44,944 eligible, and the physical completion rate for Phase I houses was 94 percent when the programme closed in September 2008.

47,864 beneficiaries, phase i homeowner-driven beneficiaries supported with ida financing, 2008-09-30. 94 %, physical completion rate for phase i houses, 2008-09-30. World Bank, Implementation Completion and Results Report, Sri Lanka Tsunami Emergency Recovery Program, 30 June 2009, retrieved 2026-10-02.

The move, and what it needed

The government paid fixed cash grants in tranches through two state banks to households rebuilding on their own land, with divisional secretaries certifying eligibility and IDA refinancing the banks.

Preconditions

  • State banks with branches in every affected division
  • A buffer-zone policy settled enough to know who rebuilds where
  • Local administrations able to certify eligibility and progress

Where else it has been used: The ICR names Pakistan's 2005 earthquake programme (pak-erra-housing) as built on this model.

Limits: Both figures are in paragraph 2.2.6 of the ICR (printed pages 6 to 7), read from the plain-text version. They cover Phase I houses outside the coastal buffer zone only, about 68 percent of the homeowner programme's Phase I, not the whole national reconstruction of more than 110,000 damaged houses, and the donor-driven programme is excluded. About 6 percent of those paid were found ineligible, section 2.4.6 reports that 93 percent of beneficiaries with unfinished houses in the north and east named insufficient funds as the obstacle, and Annex 2 reports further damage to reconstructed houses after hostilities resumed in 2006, especially in Vaharai in Batticaloa District. The completion rate is from the government's own monitoring, reported by the World Bank. The figures describe recovery from one event and not warning or evacuation.

Building

1 delivery linked to Large project delivery.

Sri Lankasince 2003delivered and closedbears on Large project delivery

Southern Expressway (Southern Transport Development Project)

Sri Lanka's Road Development Authority built the country's first access-controlled expressway, about 126 km from Kottawa to Godagama. Sections I to III opened on 26 November 2011 and section IV on 15 March 2014. The project took 13 years against a planned six. Its total cost rose from US$295.9 million at the 1999 appraisal to US$906.5 million at completion in 2014, partly because it was widened from two to four lanes.

906.5 US$ million, actual total project cost at completion, 2014. 295.9 US$ million, total project cost estimated at the 1999 appraisal (two-lane design), 1999. Asian Development Bank, Completion Report, Sri Lanka: Southern Transport Development Project (Project 26522, Loans 1711 and 2413), August 2014, retrieved 2026-10-02.

The move, and what it needed

The Road Development Authority ran one project management unit for an expressway financed in sections by ADB, JICA, the Nordic Development Fund and later China Exim. When prices rose and the design changed, it went back to the lenders for a supplementary loan instead of cutting the scope.

Preconditions

  • Several concessional lenders willing to finance one corridor in parallel and to top up after a cost overrun
  • Land acquisition and resettlement capacity, whose absence caused most of the early delay
  • A design finalized before contract award, which this project lacked and which ADB names as its main lesson

Where else it has been used: The same Road Development Authority model was reused for the Colombo-Katunayake Expressway (2013), the Outer Circular Highway and the Southern Expressway extension to Hambantota (2020), mostly with Chinese loans instead of multilateral ones.

Limits: The cost growth is not a like-for-like overrun. In 2008 the scope was widened from a two-lane road to four lanes, and against the 2008 re-appraisal of $757.7 million the overrun is about 20 percent, not about 206 percent. Both ratios are our computation from the report's figures. The cost table is sourced to the borrower's own completion report (Government of Sri Lanka, 2011), and ADB, as lender, judges a project it financed. The PCR's cost-by-financier table puts China Exim at $159.48 million within the $906.47 million total, so the section it financed is included. The schedule figure (13 years against six) runs from the 1999 approval and includes four years of design and land acquisition before construction.