Chinese team to ink MoU with COSMI

A 15 member highly influential Chinese Business delegation is now in Sri Lanka. They have been invited by Confederation of Micro, Small and Medium Industries (COSMI) to business opportunities and will ink an MoU with COSMI, its founding President Nawaz Rajabdeen said.

He said several local companies too would be holding business meetings on Monday and Tuesday with the Chinese business counterparts representing Mianyang, the second largest prefecture-level city of Sichuan province in Southwest China at the Hilton Colombo.

He said that this is the first Chinese business delegation to visit Sri Lanka after the Presidential elections. “We founded COSMI two months ago and have already brought down a high powered business delegation from China showing that we are serious in what we do.”

Presdeitn COSMI, Nawaz Rajabdeen, founding Member of COSMI Hui Dias Bandaranayake, with Chairman Mianyang Foreign Trade Association, Zhang Zhongcheng and Director International Department, John Luo in Colombo

COSMI has also gone a step further and would ink an MoU with the visiting High Powered team today.

COSMI was founded in 2019 by a group of veterans in the Chamber Movement in Sri Lanka, with a mission to revive, foster and promote industrial MSMEs in Sri Lanka.

Services provided by COSMI to industrial MSMEs include; accessing low cost finance, productivity improvement, capacity development, technology upgrade and automation, industry linkage, international trade, and legal and regulatory guidance.

Chairman Mianyang Foreign Trade Association, Zhang Zhongcheng, said that today after the election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa they have investor confidence towards Sri Lanka. “We are keen to look at investments, joint ventures and trading opportunities with Sri Lankans especially in the SME sector. “Our main areas of concern are, Solar energy, Agro and apparel machinery, smart devises and tourism.”

Founding Member of COSMI Hui Dias Bandaranayke said that the Mianyang area in China I the nerve centre for R&D. “Sri Lanka is now not looking at just buying equipment for farming or other industries. Sri Lankans are now looking for new technological innovations, knowledge transfers and Mianyang team has these capabilities.

In 2006, Mianyang was ranked as China’s third “most suitable city for living” by China Daily, after coastal cities Dalian and Xiamen.,[2] but it has since dropped out of the top 10.

She said that representatives from some of the top 500 Chinese companies are also included in this delegation which will be in Sri Lanka for three days. (SS)