I see that this is an old thread, i just happened to see it while i was scrolling down. I hail from a little known country called Sri Lanka off the coast of India. Its an island nation with a little over 22 million people.
We have had an open economy since 1970, it's close to 5 decades, its sad to say that our economic policies have run us into the ground. Back in 60's our country used to much much better than most other countries and we had so much potential. But a corrupt elite appointed politicians have ruined our chances of becoming the economic powerhouse it had the potential to be. Our neighbouring countries and fellow asian countries took advantage of our poor economic management and established themselves in the region. We are lagging behind massively and neither the people nor the politicians have realised that yet or care about it. Its a sad sad situation.