The government will bringing out the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Strategy soon to foster a climate for new high-tech products and services to emerge and also for startups to thrive, said Minister of Development Strategies and International Trade, Minister Malik Samarawickrama.
“These initiatives will benefit the current exporters and will benefit emerging and aspiring exporters among our domestic enterprises. We are also supporting the universities to turn out more engineering and IT graduates,” the Minister was addressing the Czech Parliamentary Delegation to Sri Lanka at the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce.
“We are at the beginning of the 4th Industrial Revolution - and Sri Lanka must latch on to the opportunities that it presents and do so fast.
“We are actively promoting hub operations in Sri Lanka due to our strategic location in the ‘Bay of Bengal’ geographical area covering Bangladesh and the ports in the east cost of India.”
Karachi, Male, Madagascar and even Myanmar also have potential focus in Sri Lanka as the connection port for the mother vessels in the Asia Europe route.
With the European Union reinstating the GSP Plus facility with effect from May 2017 EU exports have increased by 11% in the 12 months after regaining GSP. He also said that Sri Lanka is on track to achieve the target of US $17.2 billion in total exports for 2018 which is an increase of 50% over the past three years.
The Minister also said that bilateral trade between the two nations is a mere US$ 30 million per annum. Apparel accounted for 1/3rd of Sri Lankan exports to the Czechia, followed by rubber tyres.
“In addition, to GSP+ we have executed the Singapore FTA earlier this year; we are in the advance stages of negotiating a FTA with China, and expanding our current FTA with India through Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement (ETCA). Together the Chinese FTA and Indian ETCA will give Sri Lanka preferential access to a market of two billion people, and an emerging middle class larger than the whole of the EU.”
“We also noted that a few of the Czech business delegation comprised representatives from the pharmaceutical sector. This is a sector where we are actively looking to develop both for domestic supply / import substitution, and for export market. We have new industrial zones planned with the sector specifically in mind, including the requirements for high quality water and intellectual property protection.”
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