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The government owned businesses should reshape their thinking and business approaches competing with the private sector to ensure their future growth and the job security of the employees, said Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Ravi Karunanayake at the opening of the second Salusala Connexion textile store recently at Kollupitiya.

"The governments has no business to be in business but the government's ownership does not matter if the business controls by it has privatised thinking and private sector approach" he said.

He said that the state owned enterprises gradually lost their market monopoly through the liberalisation of the economy and their reluctance to adapt to the changing business environment made them lossmakers and burdens to the treasury.

We must shed the past monopolies that we had and we must ensure that we would diversify into new business areas," he said.

Karunanayake said that the connexion was a result of the transformation took place at Salusala under new board during the past 11 months and said that the success of the peace process has opened new markets for the Salusala in North and the East.

He said that the Salusala in the past had failed to perform up expectations beside the fact that the garments is the flagship industry of the country, which contributes 63% of the country's industrial exports. He emphasised the importance of probing through the regional markets in the light of the present trend of bilateral free trade agreements.

"The free trade agreements have come to stay and it is no more the market for 18 million population in Sri Lanka, there is 1.4 billion people in the South Asian region and that's the market we should look at, Karunanayake said.

The Connexion was a new concept formed with the view to re position Salusala to compete with private sector textile stores where different products of seven major brands sold under one roof, along with Salusala's own products.

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