Three months (August) after Sri Lanka lost crucial trade benefits with the European Union (EU) in a tiff over human rights and worker safeguards, an investment delegation from Belgium arrives tomorrow on a 5-day visit.
“The delegation means business. They are serious businessmen and investors and are looking at the prospects of investing in Sri Lanka,” said Pierre Pringiers, Hony Consul- Consulate of Belgium in Sri Lanka.
Ravinatha Aryasinha, Sri Lankan Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and the EU, nodded in agreement, during a joint interview at a café in Colombo on Monday, saying this is the largest business delegation from Europe in the post-war era. He said they had initially targeted 15 Belgium companies/investors but finally 39 companies (50 members) are coming.
The delegation, due to meet Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa, Central Bank Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal, key private sector and chamber officials, is interested in a range of sectors like food processing, construction, energy, financial serices, gems, infrastructure and tourism.
Mr Pringiers, a Belgium National and long-standing resident in Sri Lanka, said business delegations have been regularly coming to Sri Lanka but the current mission is important in the context of the end of militancy in May 2009.
Both the Belgium national consulate and Sri Lankan embassy worked on the mission with a lot of groundwork being covered. “In a way we were getting lazy over GSP + and not pushing the trade side but after we lost this concession, the mission began working on trade issues and the response for this visit has been fantastic,” said the Sri Lankan ambassador.
Mr Pringiers says the visitors will be strictly focusing on business, not politics. “It’s unfortunate that the ‘bad news’ about Sri Lanka has affected investment although all of us aware that this ‘news’ is far from the truth.”
Mr Aryasinha says that if 70 % of his work in the EU in the pre-war era was spent on tackling the hot GSP + issue, now the reverse is happening. “New areas are opening and there are new doors in which we can walk through,” he said. |
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