Top US biz delegation to visit Sri Lanka

Shirajiv SIRIMANE

A team of reputed entrepreneurs from United States will arrive in Sri Lanka to explore the possibility of investing in Sri Lanka Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the US and Mexico Jaliya C. Wickramasuriya told Daily News that these investors are involved in oil exploration and related services, power generation, tourism, and other areas.

The embassy arranged a number of business delegation visits from USA to Sri Lanka in association with the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). He said that these investors were briefed on the opportunities available in Sri Lanka and they would be in Sri Lanka for five days. Special business networking sessions and one-to-one meetings will be held. “The final arrangements would be announced soon,” he said.

USA is Sri Lanka’s largest export market with an annual turnover of US $ 2.1 billion. It is the largest single export destination for Sri Lankan goods, with over 20 percent of local exports. “Our exports to the US demonstrated an impressive growth of 7.7 percent up to October 2012 and exports to the US up to October 2012 amounted to US $ 1.8 billion.”

Sri Lanka enjoys a favourable balance of trade with the US. In 2011 the balance of trade between the US and Sri Lanka was US $ 1.8 billion while exports and imports from the US amounted to US$ 2.14 billion and US $ 0.3 billion respectively.

He said that Sri Lanka is also gaining as a favlourite destination for US travelers. The New York Times’ nomination of Sri Lanka as a ‘must visit’ destination too has helped this while the embassy too has worked hard to promote Sri Lanka as a preferred destination for US travelers

Compared to 2011, arrivals of US tourists to Sri Lanka in 2012 saw an upward trend. “Up to November 2012, US tourist arrivals totalled 26,251. This shows a 25 percent increase compared to the same period in 2011.”

“Our short-term objective is to increase this number to 45,000 within the next three years while expecting in the long term, arrivals of 100,000 by 2017.” The embassy has a dedicated a you tube channel for travel and tourism promotion of Sri Lanka titled Wonder of Asia. (http://www.youtube.com/wonderofasia). In addition this year too the embassy would host several trade events in USA to promote Sri Lankan products.

“I will also look at promoting Sri Lanka as a destination for Hollywood film makers and the Mahinda Rajapaksa Cinema village in Hambantota would be an ideal choice for this.”

These achievements are not in isolation as Sri Lanka Tourism recognized the embassy’s outstanding achievements in its tourism promotional activities in USA at the Tourism Award Ceremony in August 2012.

He also disclosed that Starwood Group is negotiating an investment for establishing a Sheraton brand hotel in Colombo.