Exporters urge implementation of budget prosposals

Anjana Samarasinghe

FOCUS: Exporters say accelerating implementation of budget proposals in the export sector and focusing more on Free Trade Agreements FTA and GSP+ concessions are vital in increasing exports this year.

Chairman of the Exporters Association of Sri Lanka Mohan Mendis told Daily News that the recent budget granted many concessions to boost the export sector and implementation of these budget proposals should be accelerated.

Ministry of Plan and Implementation and Ministry of Finance should feed back institutions such as Inland Revenue and EDB for rapid implementation.

Reactivating export clusters are important to develop export sector in the country. Association also expects to conduct workshops to address the bottlenecks in the industry this year, he said.

President of the National Chamber of Exporters NCE Kulatunga Rajapaksa said this year local export sector need to focus more on two FTAs that Sri Lanka have with Pakistan and India. Concentrating on GSP+ scheme is very important in increasing exports in 2007.

Participating in international trade fairs are viable in attracting new markets. It is important facilitating the participation of exporters in these fairs and EDB needs to allocate more funds for organizing the participation in these international events he said.

Meanwhile Export Development Board (EDB) of Sri Lanka will present the action plan for this year to the advisory committees pertaining to different sectors for recommendations.

The Director General of the EDB Sujatha Weerakone told 'Daily News' that their action plan for 2007 will be presented for the recommendations of the 22 advisory committees in different sectors and expect to finalize the action plan in February.

This year's action plan focuses more on supply development, production diversification, market expansion. There will be changes in the action plan according to the recommendations of the advisory committees.

Though there are large number of trade fairs per year participation of the EDB depends on the recommendations made by the committees, Weerakone said.

Last year EDB targeted US $ 7 billion through total exports earnings and this year EDB targets over US $ 7.7 billion through exports.