Sri Lankan Minister says country’s growth depends on open trade and importing foreign investments
Sri Lanka’s Minister of National Policies and Economic Affairs, Harsha De Silva has said that progress depends on open trade, integrating with global production networks and import of foreign investment and expertise not available locally and not merely through organic or internal growth.
“We need to network, to merge and acquire, have people coming and going,” De Silva has said.
“The way to go is to have policies to allow technology, expertise, knowhow, to flow in,” he has said at an Economic Forum organized by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce.
He has made this observation in response to a question how information technology firms can ramp up export earnings to US$ 5 billion by 2022 from US$1.2 billion today.
According to the Minister, one way is to have free trade agreements with other countries like the one signed with Singapore.
“Another is to relax immigration laws,” De Silva has said. “How any people who started companies in Silicon Valley were born in California? Less than 10 percent. How does Singapore grow?”
Speaking of speeding up the country’s economic growth and making people more prosperous, De Silva has said it has to be thought how to integrate better with the rest of the world for which the government was creating the required policies.
OSL take:
The statement by the Minister is indicative of the Sri Lankan government’s policy of promoting open trade and encouraging foreign investments into the country. The move to improve the country’s technological knowhow and to relax regulations that hamper the start up of businesses in Sri Lanka would encourage foreign investors to set up operations in Sri Lanka. The country is currently in the process of improving the ease of doing business climate.
| Article Code : | VBS/AT/20092018/Z_3 |