Repositioning of BOI vital to attract investment - Chairman

The BOI will concentrate on broadening its export spectrum to reduce dependency on the apparel industry, and encouraging local entrepreneurship to stimulate rural development, BOI Chairman Saliya Wickremasuriya said.

He was addressing a meeting organised by the American Chamber of Commerce in Sri Lanka yesterday.

He said being the apex investment management agency of the country the BOI needs to redefine its strategic position in the country's development program, leveraging on acknowledged strengths and working on areas in which the organisation has lost effectiveness.

The repositioning has been done with UN facilitation, but has been an entirely internal, employee-driven process and it will roll out over the next couple of months, Wickremasuriya said.

"It may be the first ever voluntary re-structuring of a Government institution in this country. Competitiveness is of paramount importance in the global context and increasing this element is at the core of our entire change management process," he said.

The BOI chief said that there are four key elements of the proposed changes to the BOI.

They include revisions to the 1978 BOI Act, new regulations and policies, news structure and new strategy.

He said the BOI opened its first overseas office in Bangalore, India because 200 of the world's top 500 companies have regional offices there.

"We think that a Sri Lankan presence there will greately lend credence to our positioning ourselves as complimentary to Bangalore," he said.

The BOI is also working with Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) of the World Bank Group to offer investors an attractive package of political risk insurance. From mid 2004 the BOI placed a moratorium on all general promotion missions overseas because studies showed that in 2003, only six percent of projects commenced as a direct result of the BOI's own promotional campaigns and missions.

"67 percent of FDI in 2003 came as a result of expansions of existing investors, and the rest was a result of individual companies' own research and local linkages," he said.