“Lanka on track for hub status in trade, events and investment”

Sri Lanka has the potential to achieve hub status for investment, trade and events, in the next 10 years, Chathuranga Abeysinghe, Deputy Minister of Industries and Entrepreneurship Development told the unveiling of the comprehensive National Event Calendar event held in Colombo recently.

“We are driving for a bold, ambitious target of USD 36 billion exports by 2030 with both services and manufacturing.  And it’s not an easy task because we have to go through various challenges and I’m happy to say, with the initiative that we took over the last one and a half months, even with the global crisis, we have made a significant performance in March as well. So we have a resilient export industry, both goods and services.  And in terms of services, we are positioning Sri Lanka as a hub.  We can see Sri Lanka is becoming a hub for many events. Sri Lanka is becoming a hub for many forums. And therefore, this particular industry becomes very important in terms of positioning Sri Lanka’s hub strategy.

Abeysinghe said a great opportunity has come with the issues that are happening in the Middle East. Sri Lanka is obviously becoming a hotspot for event management going forward and it was the right time  taking this decision to drive this particular industry forward. He said the importance of the event industry becoming stronger is that this industry will drive various other industries and that is why the Minister brought in this concept of broadening the Ministry of Industry’s scope to the service sector as well, especially the event management and creative economy.

Source: Daily news