“Entrepreneurs should promote innovative methods”

H.D.H Senewiratne

The time is opportune for entrepreneurs to take their businesses into the next level by promoting innovative methods and doing things differently, Senior Minister for International Monetary Co-operation and Deputy Minister of Finance, Dr Sarath Amunugama said.

“Today we see the age of innovation and doing new things in a better way through value addition. Therefore, it would be competitive for local entrepreneurship in the international arena,”said Minister Amunugama at the Annual General Meeting of the National Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka, last week. He said that to help innovation in local entrepreneurship, we have to re-think on the state education system, which could play a pivotal role in encouraging innovations in research and development in science and technology.

Minister Amunugama said that Sri Lanka needed to look at the macro environment fundamentals change it to the modern economy to achieve economic goals for the country.

With the ending of the three decade of war, we could now be integrated with the North and East to the national economic machinery and therefore we could develop macro economic fundamentals to be competitive, he said.

He also said that at present, a large influx of foreign exchange come from housemaids in the Middle East and there too we have to rethink the exporting of professionals.

Central Bank Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal, said that last year the government introduced a multi pronged strategy to take the national economy to the next level to attract the business and fast track economic development.

Cabraal said that Sri Lanka was being diversifying the economy to reach US $ 4,000 per capita income.’’

Elected President Sunil Wijesinha, said that there was an exciting infrastructure drive, addressing long standing constraints to private enterprise activity. “Unemployment has declined considerably and poverty alleviation has been impressive. Inflation has been reigned in to single digits.

There is a concerted effort to control the budget deficit and build a better balance of payments situation. Foreign reserves are at comfortable levels and exchange rates and interest rates are more stable,’ he said that even most notably, GDP growth has picked up at a steady pace and this is amidst a very difficult global economic scenario where even the emerging giants of India and China have seen their growth falter a bit,” he said.