Pravir Samarasinghe heads IASL

The 21st Annual General Meeting of the Industrial Association of Sri Lanka (IASL) was held recently at the Cinnamon Lakeside Colombo and Pravir Samarasinghe, Swadeshi Industrial Works PLC and CEO of Overseas Realty (Ceylon) PLC took over as the Chairman of the Association from Noel Selvanayagam, Senok Trade Combine (Pvt) Ltd. Adam Sack, Country Manager, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, International Finance Corporation was the Chief Guest. In his address Sack emphasized the need to create a world class investment climate including the ease of doing business and establishing a proper industrial policy to attract desired levels of FDI to achieve sustainable economic development.

He illustrated many examples of Country's encouraging and protecting emerging industries that have comparative advantages and thereby developing leading multinationals and world market leaders. The newly elected Chairman, Samarasinghe in his address emphasized that industry and manufacture of actual tangible goods have true potential to create real value addition to the economy, real employment generation to our workforce, and bring about a meaningful sustainable contribution to the upliftment of our economy and the living standards of our people.

Samarasinghe added that "today, the industry sector contributes about 30% to GDP and has been growing at an average of 10%p.a during the last few years. Likewise manufacturing inclusive of the apparel sector contributes nearly 75%to our exports.

This clearly demonstrates the sheer magnitude and importance of industry to our national economy at large. Therefore it is very important that we nurture, protect, encourage and foster the growth of industrial activities through the implementation of a sound industrial policy".

He further stated that "we as an Association will continue to engage all stakeholders including the government and policy makers; productivity, to foster this enabling industrial policy framework and safeguard the interest of industrialists and manufacturers in general and our membership in particular. We will also make representations to the Government to address the challenges and impediments we face and to create a more suitable climate for all local industrialists to compete in a fair playing field under predictable and stable macro-economic conditions".

Further he added, "for example, at present only 5% of our exports are to India. This large and fast growing market alone offer huge opportunities for our industrialists. Exporting branded and finished goods to the large consumer market in India or intermediary and components to the growing manufacturing base in India should be aggressively pursued.

We will as an Association continue our role of advocacy to ensure greater linkages are built with Indian partners and easier entry is established into the Indian sub-continent where almost 23%of the world population lives".

Nilam Jayasinghe, Ceylon Biscuits Ltd and Dinesh Dharmadasa Ceylon Tobacco Co PLC were elected as the Senior Vice Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Association respectively.