Editor, News-in-Asia, 20 July 2018, where the title is “Sri Lanka launches ambitious 5 yr National Export Strategy to boost economic growth”
The Sri Lankan government has launched a five year National Export Strategy (NES) to boost foreign investments, foreign exchange earnings and employment, the Daily FT reported Friday. Addressing the launch of the five year NES strategy, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the key objective of the NES was to increase the capacity of the local export sector, improve trade performance and competitiveness and ensure different sectors of the economy evolved to grab a share of the global market in reaching the government’s goal of 28 billion US dollars in export revenue by 2022.
Insisting that the NES was an important element in strengthening the economic growth of Sri Lanka, the Prime Minister noted that government officials would meet exporters every six months to discuss and monitor the implementation progress.
“These are the policies we are following to ensure that the people in this country have better jobs, better incomes, better housing, better education and better healthcare,” Wickremesinghe said. “You can’t have all these without money and you can’t have money if you don’t earn your foreign exchange,” he added.
Wickremesinghe further emphasized that all the developed economies of Asia had become successful today by becoming export economies, particularly South Korea, Singapore and Vietnam. The Prime Minister also highlighted on the recent free trade agreement (FTA) signed between Sri Lanka and Singapore, and said the government was also seeking to deepen trade relations with other economies in the region.
“We have China who is talking of an FTA with us; we want to spread that over 10 years. We’re also talking about deepening trade with India. After Singapore FTA, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia are keen on FTAs; we are covering the whole Bay of Bengal, which are going to be our new markets,” he stated.
With regards to the FTA with Singapore, Wickremesinghe reassured that both countries had agreed that there would be no free movement of people.
