Regional council to address disparities

Malaysian Tourism Minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor arrives in Colombo next Sunday in a visit aimed at encouraging more Sri Lankans to visit Malaysia during the current “Visit Malaysia Year” campaign.

Kandy - Last week’s launch of a regional business council in Kandy to represent the interests of Sri Lankan and Malaysian businessmen is seen as the stepping stone towards increasing the share of GDP in regions, officials said.

Daya Weeraratne, President of the new council, said he hoped the move would drive more investment. Currently the western province accounts for 48 percent of the GDP while the balance 52 percent is shared by the rest of Sri Lanka including the northeast which has a seven percent stake.

Malaysian High Commissioner Nazirah Hussain said it was creditable for a developing country like Malaysia to be Sri Lanka’s biggest foreign investor for the second year running in 2006. She said hopefully the Colombo-Kandy new highway in which Malaysian investment is involved would get off the ground and speed up development in this region.

She invited Sri Lanka to use Malaysia as a window to the large ASEAN market of 500 million people while Malaysian businesses could consider Sri Lanka as a gateway to the massive South Asian market of over a billion people.

Meanwhile Malaysian Tourism Minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor arrives in Colombo next Sunday in a visit aimed at encouraging more Sri Lankans to visit Malaysia during the current “Visit Malaysia Year” campaign.