Sri Lanka making preparations to host largest gathering of delegates for a conference in 2019
Sri Lanka is to host the Non Aligned Summits in Colombo next year and it will be the first time in 45 years that the country would host the largest gathering of delegates for a conference in Colombo.
The local media has reported that CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) is an international agreement between governments and is reviewed every two to three years in one of the member states and Sri Lanka will host the conference in 2019 with the participation of 4500 delegates at its Conference of Parties (CoP).
The venue selected to host this convention is the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BMICH) in Colombo with all of its facilities being used to capacity to carry out exhibitions and other meetings and simultaneous side events scheduled to be held from May 20- June 3, 2019.
CEO of the BMICH Sunil Dissanayake has reportedly said that this event is considered to witness the largest participation of 4500 delegates from 187 countries.
He has explained that this was a unique event in that he who was in charge of catering for the Non-Aligned Summit back in 1976 has been selected as Chairman of the venue by CITES for next year’s event. The Non-Aligned Summit held in 1976 had a participation of 96 heads of state including 2000 delegates.
The summit was held in South Africa two years ago.
OSL take:
The announcement of Sri Lanka planning to play host to the Non Aligned summit in 2019 indicates that the country has the required infrastructure facilities in place to organize such events. Therefore, Sri Lanka is also a MICE destination in the South Asian region that could be considered by foreign businesses/investors to hold their next destination confab/summit.
| Article Code : | VBS/AT/20181022/Z_3 |