NCCSL to lobby EU to achieve GSP+

Suraj Bandara

The National Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka will lobby the EU to continue the GSP+ this year irrespective of the vulnerability of loosing it, said National Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka (NCCSL) President, C Lal de Alwis.

He was speaking at the National Business Excellence Awards 2009 (NBEA), which was held consecutively sixth year at the Hilton Hotel on Thursday.

The awards were launched in 2004 to recognize the successful business community who rendered service to Sri Lanka and benchmark them by evaluating the performance through a set of stringent criteria adopted by an independent panel of judges.

He said the Government alone cannot solve all the problems; the private sector must play a pivotal role and help in the country's economic development.

The conducive environment will help expand business throughout the country and encourage the local entrepreneur to launch new initiatives and reach the global business arena.

Eligible performers in the private business sector should be recognized and given a self-evaluation to identify in which position they are in the local and global spheres of business, said de Alwis.

The objective of the competition was to benchmark and reward the contributions made by business enterprises for the country's economic progress and to recognize enterprises that have created a capacity for economic growth and employment generation. The NBEA is a unique national awards scheme as it evaluates the overall performance of a company and selects the cream of the business in the country for awards, said the Chairman of the Panel of judges, Director-PIM, Dr. Uditha Liyanage.

The theme of the ceremony was 'Excellence is the pinnacle of achievement'.

The principal sponsor and Guest of honour was Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel Chairperson, Mrs Leisha de Silva Chandrasena.