FDI promotion in the West Coast of USA

Sri Lanka's Consul General in Los Angeles, Ananda Wickramasinghe with senior officials of the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka (BOI) launched a comprehensive Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) promotion in the West Coast of USA this month Deputy Director General BOI, A.M. Chandrasiri Kulasekera and Executive Director, Duminda Ariyasinghe, were in California during the promotion.

The FDI promotional launched included several focused programs. On July 20 the promotional team with the direct support of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce conducted a roundtable dialogue session with the members of the Los Angeles Chamber at the Board Room of the Chamber which followed by a dialogue session with the leading Sri Lankan entrepreneurs based in California.

The meeting was attended by about 40 Sri Lankan entrepreneurs in California.

The BOI team and the Consulate officials travelled to San Jose to hold several one on one meetings with major technology companies based in the Silicon Valley.

As a result of the promotional meetings, the Sri Lankan side could identify several investment projects in shrimp farming, manufacture and regional distribution of automobile spare parts for Japanese vehicles, introduction of a 100 acre organic eco-park for cultivation of herbal products and establishment of a health resort, a television assembling plant, residential development project with at least 25 luxury houses, establishment of a call centre and a manufacturing facility for telephone equipment and operational systems for global hospitality industry and a few hundred acre dairy farm project.

The proposed shrimp farming project is to facilitate Sri Lanka to enter the global pharmaceutical industry, as the investor intends opening a manufacturing facility in Sri Lanka to extract Glucosamine from shrimp shells, commonly used for the treatment of osteoarthritis.

This innovative product is to be marketed in USA. The US entrepreneur having noted the tremendous potential for growth in Sri Lanka is in the process of submitting the project proposal to the BOI for approval.

One of the features of the visit was a meeting conducted at the Google Campus where the Sri Lanka team could meet the Senior Vice President in charge of Global Finances of Google, Brent Callinicos the most dynamic Global leader in the IT sector, to explore possible avenues of getting Google to Sri Lanka on an IT Sector outsourcing project.

The investment projects discussed during the one-on-one meetings, as well as during the dialogue sessions would bring over US$25 million of foreign investments to Sri Lanka which would assist the generation of employment opportunities for the Sri Lankan workforce.