General Knowledge and Current Affairs: Sri Lanka and the World
General Knowledge and Current Affairs tests recall plus judgement: you must place Sri Lanka's institutions, geography and external relations in context and show awareness of events from roughly the past eighteen months, without inventing figures.
What the paper rewards
- Officeholders and institutions: President, Prime Minister, Speaker, Chief Justice, Governor of the Central Bank, Attorney General, Foreign Secretary and the Secretaries of key ministries. Know who holds each post at the time of the exam.
- The economic file: the IMF Extended Fund Facility approved in March 2023, subsequent programme reviews, debt restructuring with the Official Creditor Committee co-chaired by India, France and Japan and with private bondholders, reserves, the rupee's path, and the cost-of-living debate.
- Foreign relations: India (grid connectivity, energy, fisheries disputes), China (Colombo Port City, Hambantota), Japan, the EU's GSP+ scheme, the United States, and the Gulf states that host Sri Lankan labour.
- Multilateral memberships: UN and its agencies, Commonwealth, SAARC, BIMSTEC, IORA, Colombo Security Conclave. Distinguish each body's membership and when it last met.
- Geography: Pidurutalagala (2,524 m) as the highest peak, the Mahaweli as the longest river, an exclusive economic zone of roughly 517,000 sq km.
Worked example
Question: 'Outline the main elements of Sri Lanka's economic stabilisation programme since 2022.' A scoring answer allocates roughly one paragraph to the trigger (reserve depletion, suspended external payments in April 2022, inflation peaking near 70 per cent); one to the IMF programme and its reviews; one to debt treatment across domestic, bilateral and commercial creditors; one to reforms such as utility pricing, state enterprise restructuring and revenue measures; and a short conclusion on risks. Each claim carries a date or a named institution.
Traps
Mixing up SAARC and BIMSTEC membership; citing a superseded officeholder; quoting exchange-rate or reserve figures from memory; treating a headline as settled policy.