Regional Economic Agency takes over from GTZ

By L.B. Senaratne

The Regional Economic Development Agency was inaugurated by the Chief Minister of the Central Province Sarath Ekanayake on Wednesday. This is a new business and the successor of the GTZ project which was developing Kandy District. This is a new business service window for the private and public sectors to sharpen their competitiveness. The aim is to build a well qualified and experienced public and private sector staff, to cater to the needs of the people.

Their main target is to give and improve service packages to the micro, medium, small and large enterprises and the public sector, not only in the Central Province, but to the entire country. But, initially they would be centered in the Kandy district.

The new agency is geared to expand the market coverage, strengthen the business grip and investment, to improve efficiency and effectiveness In the field of Information Technology, they would manage the IT tools.

The Chief Minister said that GTZ itself had done a lot of work for the Central Province and noted that the Provincial Council would help the new project to maintain its targets.

The work of this Agency is managed by an advisory body, where the Chief Secretary of the province, the District Secretary and others of importance in public and private sectors are its members. Officials at the new agency said they hoped that all areas of the private and public sector would make use of this institution for all their needs in order to expand their business, training programmes and all that they could derive to develop the country and the province.