Creating an investor-friendly environment

The Investments Board and the Investment Promotion Ministry are taking measures to improve the methods of attracting both foreign and domestic investment said Investment Promotion Minister Navin Dissanayke.

He was addressing the BizPact "Invest in Sri Lanka" International Symposium which was held recently.

If there are obstacles in the infrastructure facilities, we will clear them. If there are impediments in the release of land for the various projects, we will eliminate those impediments so that the land is handed in the shortest possible time; if the concern is obtaining permission from the environmental agencies, we will expedite those procedures.

There is an increasing demand for foreign capital not only in the northern and eastern provinces. There has not been any meaningful investment in these two regions during the last three decades.

The socio-political forces have overridden the financial and economic needs of the day in these two provinces.

How can we improve our ranking in the business world and compete with the growing economies in the west like USA, the UK and Scandinavia but also in the east like Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand. Unless we position ourselves against our superiors in the West as well as in the East, we are bound to fail in our attempts to bring in better times for our people the Minister said.

We will make a collective effort to raise our growth rate 10 percent in ten years. It is possible if we apply ourselves, not as individuals, but as a cohesive community of investors and beneficiaries, in other words, as a total entity of a nation. There lies our salvation, and there lies your profits. For profits follow economic activity. And economic activity follows investment he said.

The building blocks in the twenty first century are Japan, India and China. The US has realized it, the rest of Europe has realized it and those three countries have realized it.

The progression of China and India from the third world to the first world in terms of economics is remarkable. The growth of their domestic product is phenomenal, so that the global recession that has enveloped all other countries is having not so critical an impact on India and China. On the other hand, Japan stands alone as the biggest bi-lateral donor of the world. Japan's good relations with Sri Lanka have extracted a promise from Japan that they will invest two billion US dollars in the next five years, he said.

In that context, our attempt will be to make the surrounding environment as investor-friendly as possible. In this regard we are bound to face severe competition from the other developing countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam, China and even India.