Colombo International Retail Festival planned as annual event

Plans are afoot to hold the Colombo International Retail Festival every year and maintain its standard on par with similar events in Singapore and Dubai, it was revealed on Tuesday.
At a news briefing, the Sri Lanka Retailers Association (SLRA) said it plans to enhance the training of skilled retail industry professionals while posting skilled professionals to manage the retail outlets.  
Speaking at the first AGM of the association held in Colombo, Hussain Sadiq, President, SLRA said that the inagural Colombo International Festival is now underway (held in the month of October) and is the foundation for a bigger journey for the country to attract tourism and a soon-to-be voice of the retail industry in South East Asia which includes Singapore and Dubai.
He said that they have set up a training institute and through it they would be training skilled retail industry professionals to man their retail outlets with professionally qualified retail managers and these professionally trained retail managers could also go abroad for enhanced remuneration. 
The SLRA has set up the Sri Lanka Retail Forum to bring all the industry professionals together and already they are having discussions with large groups like Cargills, Abans and John Keells.(QP)