BPA Annual General Meeting in Colombo

Regional business leaders representing all the districts in Sri Lanka are scheduled to meet in Colombo for The Business for Peace Alliance (BPA) Annual General Meeting on October 29 at Galle Face Hotel, Colombo.

BPA is Sri Lanka's network of regional business chambers committed to Regional Empowerment, Corporate Social Responsibility and National Unity. The network is owned by the regional business chambers and is a "bottom up", initiative of the regional business community to play a key role for the development of the regions they represent and make a significant contribution to nation building.

The new Board of Directors that will come into office represent twelve geographical clusters which cover the entire country and are nominated by the regional business chambers who constitute BPA's membership.

BPA has developed a strong governance mechanism to ensure high standards of professionalism with transparency and accountability in meeting BPA's mandate. A special programme has been designed for capacity development of the Board of Directors and a "Board Development Committee" will be set up shortly after the AGM.

Following the formal proceedings of the AGM, the regional business community will confer on common challenges faced by the regions and participate in a workshop on the theme: "Social cohesion through Commerce".

BPA recognises that business is a powerful binding factor that breaks across barriers of geography, race, religion, gender, class and creed.

As such, the main objective of the post AGM workshop is to develop a strategy to achieve greater levels of inclusiveness within the network of regional Chambers of Commerce, so that Chambers can become more representative of the community in which they operate. Focus will be on inclusion of marginalised groups into the chamber membership such as minority communities, women and young entrepreneurs, greater representation of a variety of business sectors in the region and business in peripheral areas.

The programme will conclude with a reception where the regional business leaders will meet BPA's stakeholders based in Colombo including representatives from the Government, Chamber movements, big business, international organisations, the diplomatic community, civil society, the academia and the media. The Chief Guest will be Chairman of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, J. D. Bandaranayake.