Import liberalisation, a source of value addition - Dr Kelegama
Gayan KANCHANA
The Mahinda Chinthana Idiri dekma aims for a 8 percent growth rate.
This can come by improving the ‘doing business’ environment in Sri Lanka
and bringing down the incremental capital output ratio (ICOR) from five
to four and increasing investment to 32 percent of GDP, Institute of
Policy Studies executive director Dr.Saman Kelegama said.
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Dr Saman Kelegama |
In his speech at the 75th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the import
section of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC) held in Colombo on
Tuesday Dr. Kelegama said it can deal with four broad issues relevant to
the import sector in Sri Lanka.
In the Sri Lankan economy imports roughly amounts to US $ 12 billion
and exports amounts to US $ 8 billion.
This roughly boils down to imports amounting to 30 percent GDP and
export amounting to 20 percent of GDP. If we add the service trade in to
import and export then import will amount to 38 percent of GDP and
export will amount to 24 percent of GDP,” he said.
“Import liberalization can also be a source of value addition, for
instance, assembly operation for completely knocked down importations.
One can import components of motor vehicles, three wheels or
refrigerators and assemble them with some value addition to sell in the
domestic market.
“The value addition will be small but if the operation takes place in
a large scale, the value addition will be also bigger,” Dr. Kelegama
said.
CCC Import section Chairman Mahesh Wijewardene said they welcome the
Government’s recent move reducing applicable duty and tax rates in many
sectors and also complete removal of certain tariff lines that would
certainly benefit the importers across sectors. “We have experienced
similar reductions previously as well but they were short lived, under
the Government’s revenue generating pressure. However while applauding
this positive move, we hope that this will be a step taken with a long
term perspective giving confidence for businesses to make long term
decisions without much hesitation,” Wijewardene said. |
