To generate more employment:

Entrepreneurship culture essential

Sanjeevi Jayasuriya

There is a need to create an entrepreneurship culture in the country to generate more employment opportunities.

"The entrepreneurs will be the future driving force and we need to promote entrepreneurship skills among the younger generation. This would solve the unemployment problem to a certain extent and contribute to an increase in the gross domestic production, Colombo University Business Economics Prof H D Karunaratne told Daily News Business.

Measures should be taken to generate employment opportunities for rural educated females to enable them to participate in the economic development process. The Government needs to have consistent policies in place to consolidate the development activities, he said.

People's confidence could be created by consistent policies and their implementation. This is vital for long term capital investment and venture creation. The sustainability of the economic value projects will depend on integrated focused approach.

The low interest rate regime has provided opportunity for funding of new ventures and the banking sector should make efforts to attract more borrowers to stimulate the economic activities.

"Sri Lanka could be marketed to become a service hub and the education sector needs to be geared to attract more foreign students. We need to organize international research related activities to promote research and development in the country. Educational tourism could play a major role in this regard," he said.

This will also diversify the tourism industry as it could be the leading growth sector in the country. More investment for the tourism sector will fuel the economic growth further where the global economy is recovering at present. Sri Lanka could reap benefits of this recovery and the country's service sector will lead the economic growth, Prof Karunaratne said.