Indo-Lanka trade volumes increase

Minister of Enterprise Development and Investment Promotion Dr Sarath Amunugama, met a team from Accenture, a world leader in the area of IT and BPO. The delegation consisted of, Chairman and CEO of Tholons Avinash Vashistha, Principal of Tholons Vinu B. Kartha and Sanjay Seth of Accenture.

The team on a brief visit to Sri Lanka will be meeting leading institutions and personalities to exchange views and to understand better Sri Lankan conditions and potential for investment. The team from Accenture is particularly interested in studying Sri Lanka’s education system to ascertain the suitability of graduates and professionals for their operations.

The initial meeting took place at the BOI and then the delegation called on Dr Amunugama at the Ministry of Enterprise Development and Investment Promotion.

At the discussions, held at the Ministry of Enterprise Development and Investment Promotion, Dr Amunugama spoke of the economic changes taking place in Sri Lanka and made a strong case for the country as an excellent base for investment.

He emphasised the important role of the private sector in Sri Lanka and described the country’s favourable business climate.

At the same time the Minister told the delegation, from India, that Indo-Sri Lankan relations had never been better, a cornerstone of these relations was the Free Trade Agreement between the two countries that had resulted in a massive increase in the volume of trade between both States. Another element of this expansion of economic ties was the growth in Indian investment into Sri Lanka. Relations between both countries were therefore excellent.

Dr. Amunugama also said that he expected a massive increase in tourist arrivals into the country, stating that from the current half a million level, it could easily reach one million. In the future however, these numbers could well come from India, which has a growing middle class which is already showing a keen interest for overseas travel.

Accenture is a global management company involved in consulting, technology services and outsourcing, with net revenues of US$ 16.65 billion in 2006. It has offices and operations in more than 150 cities across the world with 146,000 employees in 49 countries. Accenture has developed strong ties with some of the leading enterprises in the world including 91 Fortune 500 companies.

Accenture’s interest in Sri Lanka is essentially in IT related Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). This area of activity has enjoyed very significant growth in India, due to the very large pool of IT graduates and the strong English language base in India.

Sri Lanka enjoys some of these conditions and has succeeded in attracting some BPO companies or operations such as HSBC, WNS, WPA, OT and Amba Research.

This is a sector that the BOI is actively promoting and has the potential of becoming an important sector for the country in the years to come.