Sri Lanka’s total export earnings reached US$12.01 billion in the first eight months of 2026, up 4.26 percent on the US$11.52 billion earned in the same period last year, the Export Development Board said.
Merchandise exports grew 3.63 percent to US$9.41 billion, while services exports rose more strongly — 6.59 percent to US$2.60 billion, Lanka Business Online reported. NewsFirst reported the same growth rates from the EDB, describing continued growth in both goods and services.
August on its own
August 2026 produced US$1.60 billion in total exports, a year-on-year rise of 1.77 percent. Within that, services exports jumped 13.97 percent to US$331.87 million, while merchandise exports came to US$1.27 billion.
The monthly pattern repeats the cumulative one: services are doing the work. Their share of the eight-month total is now close to 22 percent, and they grew at nearly twice the rate of goods.
Measured against the board’s own target
The EDB has said it expects a record US$19 billion for the full year — a figure its chairman, Mangala Wijesinghe, gave at the board’s 47th anniversary ceremony on August 1 and which we set against the seven-month total a month ago.
At that point, reaching US$19 billion required about US$1.70 billion a month across the remaining five months, against the US$1.64 billion recorded in July.
With eight months banked, US$6.99 billion remains to be earned in four months — about US$1.75 billion a month. August delivered US$1.60 billion.
The required pace has therefore risen while the actual monthly figure has fallen, and the gap between them has widened from roughly US$60 million a month to about US$150 million. This comparison is LankaNewz’s own, drawn from the EDB’s published figures; neither outlet set the eight-month milestone against the annual target, and neither reports whether Wijesinghe has restated it.
Hitting the target remains arithmetically possible, but it would require four consecutive months well above any monthly figure recorded so far this year.
