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The recent budget was a balancing act taking the hard political and economic realities into consideration and exporters and importers in Sri Lanka should make it work according to their advantage, Economic Reform, Science and Technology, Minister Milinda Moragoda said.

The Minister was addressing a seminar organised by the Exporters Association of Sri Lanka on Friday.

He said the Government is heading towards the right direction and adopted its policies considering the liberalisation of international trade, globalisation of capital markets and the information and communications technology revolution as the key factors of current world economic trend.

"Globalisation is the challenge that we all have to face. We can take globalisation as an opportunity. Liberalisation of international trade and globalisation of capital markets is already happening. We have already decided that our human resources, our technical abilities and our entrepreneurial skills can give us a real advantage in creating an ICT centre for southern Asia.

That is why in my Ministry we are currently developing a road map to build a new sector for our markets," the Minister said.

"The Monterrey Summit and the forthcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development have and will focus on the need to spread the benefits of globalisation and provide a fresh momentum to development.

For our part, the assistance we are receiving from the IMF, World Bank and closer home from the Asian Development Bank, shows that the new found willingness provides assistance with greater flexibility. We can choose to be 'little Sri Lankans' and reject outside aid as interference or we can say, at last the world is giving us the chance to climb the ladder to shared prosperity.

Monterrey started the process of creating mutual accountability between developing and developed countries to achieve real, measurable improvements in growth and poverty reduction. There is a reversal in the declining trend in the Overseas Development Aid and a more open approach to building partnerships on capacity building particularly using the power of the knowledge economy.

He said that countries with weak and corrupt governments or poor macro economic policies will find it difficult to secure support.

"For us that means two things. Firstly we have to get our governance in order. We have to show the world community that we have turned the corner to a more free and open government where true democracy exists. Our Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe is leading the charge in that direction.

Secondly we have to create a favorable climate for domestic and foreign investors. And that is where investment in export industries is key to our successful economic transformation. The budget has started that process and the budgets have to balance both trade and national interests. More specifically our determination to de-regulate will have a huge effect in attracting investment from all sources. De-regulation will happen but not as in some sort of 'big bang' approach," Minister Moragoda said. 

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