With the recent unveiling of trade related national projects such as NES and SLTIP, there is clear progress in the management of Sri Lanka’s international trade, and it’s time to leverage these initiatives to move to the next level, stressed Geneva International Trade Centre’s (ITC) Executive Director Arancha González in Colombo last week.
Acknowledging ITC’s call, Sri Lanka nudged Geneva to help the country’s SMEs to play a bigger role in exports.
“There is clear progress in the management of Sri Lanka’s international trade. We at International Trade Centre are pleased. The glass is half full for Sri Lanka’s trade, and you need to fill the rest,” advised González during a discussion with Minister of Industry and Commerce, Rishad Bathiudeen on the sidelines of the launch of Sri Lanka Trade information Portal (SLTIP) by the Department of Commerce.
Minister Bathiudeen said, “The World Bank and the ITC coordinated their activities in the trade facilitation work very well. Continuous collaboration between donors and development partners is important to maximise the benefits of technical assistance to Sri Lanka.”
“I welcome ITC’s offer to further support our TIP in the coming years. This complements the World Bank’s efforts and also ensures the sustainability of the large scale trade reforms by our Government. We have a registered SME base of over one million. Adding the unregistered SMEs, it translates into an even larger base of economic activity.
These SMEs play a considerable role in our domestic consumer, supply and even value chains. I believe that time has come to integrate this sector into our exports and make these brands visible globally. Today I call upon ITC to extend its support to our ongoing efforts to link SMEs to global chains.”
ITC Director Ms González said, “The NES and SLTIP should now be operationalised well and the European Union is very supportive of these initiatives.”
“Sri Lanka should start leveraging this progress now. Progress in trade should be translated into new employment generation. The impact of structural reforms is medium to long term. Trade-to-Jobs too is a medium to long term transformation and therefore, this needs to be managed politically.
“Sri Lanka’s immediate strategy should be to showcase what is working. Therefore, there needs to be immediate visibility for Sri Lanka’s winning brands in global markets. This means Sri Lanka should next look at where attention is not (sufficiently) paid in its trade, and should swiftly move to address them.”