"Growth as a Panacea"

On the sidelines of the Sri Lanka Economic Summit 2007 (SLES-07), Mahen Dayananda, Chairman, The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, spoke exclusively with The Sunday Times FT. Some excerpts:

Objectives of SLES-07
The main objective is to address the huge mismatch in regional development. The Western Province has a per capita income approaching USD 2,000, which is very impressive. However, the situation is very different in the regions. Moneragala is at USD 600; we cannot justify this disparity any longer.

The main issue that we intend to address is the development of infrastructure, which is so important in addressing imbalance. The more regional imbalances there are, the more the potential for dissatisfaction.

The Western Province is so active and productive because we have much better infrastructure than the regions do. We have the port; the only international airport in the country is 45 minutes from Colombo. We want to come to some affirmative action to address these issues.

Widening growth will address several issues apart from economic development - social issues, most definitely. It can contribute to a rapid settlement of our ethnic problem; with economic prosperity, the people’s mindset changes.

SLES: History and Achievements
There have been five ‘business conventions’ previously. This is only the second economic summit. The significant difference is that we have been upgrading. The main point of departure is the increased number of participating ministers. We are doing this with a chosen partner - the Board of Investment, to add value by encompassing a much wider spectrum.

We are looking at the Indian model where CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) has an annual economic summit that is on a public – private partnership basis. Most leaders relevant to economy participate at the forum: Prime Minister, Finance Minister and Commerce and Industry Minister. That is what we are trying to replicate.

Foreign Investment: Sectors
Foreign investment is definitely required to develop our infrastructure. We most definitely need inputs - not always investment, but foreign technology.

We also need to add value to a number of our commodity exports. Tea and spices are classic examples of where we need to go up the value-addition chain. For that, we need foreign technology, specifically for upgrading quality standards. Today, tea has moved from being a bulk commodity to being an ISO-certified product. That’s no longer enough; we have to be HACCP-certified. All this means investment, technology, and foreign inputs.

On IT and BPO: HSBC, ‘the world’s local bank’, has a BPO facility in Colombo that was entirely driven by foreign input in terms of how it was set up. Similarly, the font of IT in Asia is India, whose input is going to be essential.

To Avoid ‘Talk Shop’ Label
Extensive notes will be maintained by the CCC throughout the summit. We will extricate the important issues that emerge from the deliberations. Having done that, we will prepare a document encompassing them all and present it to the government, who will take it very seriously.