Recognising the need to implement a comprehensive cross border transactions and domestic foreign currency transactions monitoring system as a key national priority, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) has implemented a new data collecting system known as the International Transactions Reporting System (ITRS) with the participation of Licensed Commercial Banks (LCBs) and Licensed Specialised Banks (LSBs). The ITRS is a comprehensive data gathering system on cross border transactions and domestic foreign currency transactions and is aimed at filling multitude of existing data gaps. It will help policy formulation in many aspects by providing valuable inputs for both statistical and regulatory purposes. The ITRS system will serve a number of purposes, including the enhancement of Balance of Payments Statistics, including export proceeds, imports, services account transactions such as IT/BPO transactions, workers’ remittances, financial account transactions, and many other statistical data inputs.

Purchasing Managers' Indices for both Manufacturing and Services activities indicated a subdued performance in May 2022.

Manufacturing PMI recorded an index value of 50.3 in May 2022, with an increase of 13.9 index points from the seasonally low value in the month of April.

Services PMI dropped marginally to an index value of 42.4 in May 2022 indicating a contraction in services activities for the second consecutive month.