Sri Lanka’s combined merchandise and services exports passed US$10 billion in the first seven months of 2026, the Export Development Board said on Monday — the first time the country has reached that mark by the end of July.

EDB Chairman and Chief Executive Mangala Wijesinghe disclosed the figures at a media briefing at the Department of Government Information, Ada Derana reported.

The numbers

Total export earnings from goods and services reached an estimated US$10,487.80 million between January and July, a 5.5% increase on the same period in 2025, according to Lanka Business Online and NewsFirst.

Merchandise exports remained the larger share at US$8,188.32 million, up 5.05% year on year. Services exports came to an estimated US$2,299.48 million, up 7.02% — the faster-growing of the two.

For July alone, merchandise exports were US$1.29 billion, a decline of 1.3% against July 2025, while services exports were an estimated US$351.92 million. Combined July earnings were about US$1.64 billion, 2.63% above the same month last year. Those monthly figures rest on provisional Sri Lanka Customs data together with estimated values for gems and jewellery and for petroleum products.

What dragged July down

EconomyNext reported the same EDB data with a product breakdown the other outlets did not carry, and attributed the monthly fall to apparel and tea.

Apparel and textile earnings fell 8.82% year on year to US$437.59 million in July. The decline ran across the major destinations: shipments to the United States were down 6.28%, to the United Kingdom 5.73% and to the European Union 8.61%.

Tea earnings fell 17.22% to US$116.73 million. The EDB attributed that primarily to the Middle East, where tea exports fell 47.93% against July 2025. Within the region it reported declines of 78.54% to Iraq, 73.09% to Iran, 57.49% to the United Arab Emirates and 3.44% to Saudi Arabia.

Coconut-based products fell 9.89% to US$111.71 million. Seafood recorded the sharpest proportional drop, down 60.31% to US$15.58 million.

Wijesinghe tied the two largest declines to the conflict in the Middle East. “40 percent of our apparel exports go to the US. 35 percent of our tea goes to the middle east. The war situation has seen a drop in demand,” he said. “We expect this situation will be overcome in the next 3-4 months.”

Services grew, financial services collapsed

Within the July services figure, EconomyNext reported that transport and logistics grew 40.02% to US$193.53 million and construction rose 30.88% to US$13.09 million. ICT and business process management, the largest single services category after transport, grew 2.32% to US$143.24 million.

Financial services fell 57.25% to US$2.10 million — a steep proportional fall from an already small base, and small enough not to move the total.

Wijesinghe said the priority was “to build on this momentum by strengthening the competitiveness of existing export sectors while accelerating the development of new products, services and markets.”

Two discrepancies in the reporting

The outlets do not agree on the headline figure. Lanka Business Online and NewsFirst both give US$10.49 billion. Ada Derana reported the total as US$10.437 billion, attributing it to Wijesinghe at the same briefing.

The board’s own component figures settle which is internally consistent: US$8,188.32 million in merchandise plus US$2,299.48 million in services comes to US$10,487.80 million exactly, matching the higher total. LankaNewz has not established the origin of the lower figure, and the EDB has not published a correction. The gap is about US$51 million — immaterial to the milestone itself, but enough to matter to anyone citing a precise number.

The outlets also split on how fast services grew. Both NewsFirst and EconomyNext give July services exports as US$351.92 million and both attribute the data to the EDB, but NewsFirst puts the increase at 3.75% year on year while EconomyNext puts it at 20.07% and carries that figure in its headline.

The gap is in the July 2025 comparison, not the current month. A 3.75% rise implies a base of about US$339 million; a 20.07% rise implies about US$293 million. Neither report states the July 2025 figure, so the discrepancy cannot be resolved from the two accounts. EconomyNext’s four itemised services categories sum to approximately the US$351.92 million total, which supports the absolute figure. LankaNewz has not established which growth rate is correct and has not used either in the summary above.

Context

The July merchandise dip is the one soft point in the figures: goods exports fell slightly against July 2025 even as the seven-month cumulative total rose. Services growth offset it, lifting the combined monthly result back into positive territory.

The milestone should be read against the board’s own target. At the EDB’s 47th anniversary ceremony on August 1, Wijesinghe said the board expected to reach a record US$19 billion in export revenue by the end of 2026.

Measured against that target, the seven-month total leaves about US$8.5 billion to be earned in the remaining five months of the year — roughly US$1.70 billion a month, against the US$1.64 billion recorded in July. The comparison is LankaNewz’s own, drawn from the EDB’s published figures; no outlet set the milestone against the annual target, and none reported whether Wijesinghe restated it on Monday.

No outlet published a full breakdown by destination market beyond the apparel and tea figures above, though the EDB released sectoral and regional charts alongside the data.

Sources