FDIs to enter State service

To supplement anticipated growth:

The global business dynamics compels businesses in Sri Lanka to continuously re-imagine the challenges to survive and re-create the business model.

Speaking at the CIMA 2010 Business Leaders Summit at Cinnamon Grand Hotel, Board of Investment (BOI) Chairman Jayampathi Bandaranayake said the end of the war has opened doors to a completely different business equilibrium that existed 30 years ago.

He said it would be extremely challenging to meet the manpower needs in a scenario of the anticipated accelerated growth in the country.

“As such the political leadership needs the picture of economic success and areas of future growth to tackle under employment and unemployment,” he said.

This can be done by creating innovative mechanisms for training of such job seekers for the real jobs of tomorrow and not for the non-existent jobs of today. There will be demand for skilled workers, from growth sectors such as tourism, IT, BPO, agriculture, livestock shipping and aviation, the Chairman said.

The wider private sector must play its role as responsible partners in helping in the national imperatives by lending a hand to overcome national problems.

They can offer to step into handle vital services that need improvement.

“There are sound opportunities in achieving goals such as self-sufficiency in dairy, fish and other agricultural products saving a huge amount of foreign exchange,” Bandaranayake said.

The mandate for investments in the country is to have a co-ordinated approach with all relevant agencies and to get visible and speedy action and the second phase of investment will be foreign direct investment coming to the State services sector as joint ventures to improve the services keeping the ownership with the Government.

State sector employees should be competitive and work towards being the global best by eliminating waste, improving efficiency, benchmarking service standards to enhance the quality of public service.

Bandaranayake said the legal fraternity also should find new ways of working to eliminate law’s delays and finally people need to change certain cultural habits, mind-sets and approaches to be able to compete as a country with other countries for advancement. RK