“Meet Sri Lanka” Promoting Travel, Trade and Tourism

The Sri Lanka Convention Bureau and Sri Lanka Airlines held a seminar “Meet Sri Lanka”, a promotional campaign on 31st July 2009 in New Delhi.

The promotional campaign primarily aimed at promoting travel, trade and tourism in Sri Lanka. The seminar was attended by H. E. Mr. C. R. Jayasinghe, High Commissioner of Sri Lanka to India, and hosted by Mr. Prema Cooray, Chairman, Sri Lanka Convention Bureau and Mr Amit Sumanatala, General Manager, Sri Lankan Airlines.  

OIA Chairman, Ambassador V. B. Soni, who is also a Senior Member of CII was a special invitee and a keynote speaker at the seminar.  Ambassador Soni, in his speech emphasized on promoting tourism and corporate convention tourism in Sri Lanka and how India and Sri Lanka has a unique Free trade Agreement which has yielded fruitful results.

We bring you excerpts of his exclusive speech:

SPEECH BY OIA CHAIRMAN, AMBASSADOR V. B. SONI.

In his address Ambassador Soni said CII (WE) have a strong partnership with the Sri Lanka High Commission, Sri Lanka Convention Bureau and the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce.

Sri Lanka offers lot of opportunities for holding conventions, organizing conferences and congratulated them on the many initiatives that they have taken to promote tourism and corporate convention tourism.

Expressing his views, he said “We are delighted that the Sri Lankan Government is granting visa on arrival to Indian tourists.  This is a welcome development”. 

One of the greatest advantages of Sri Lanka is the fact that there are some excellent spots for tourism.  These are well maintained and made attractive for the tourists to visit.  An additional advantage of Sri Lanka is that the hotels they have are much less priced than what we have in India and, that is an additional attraction.

Sri Lanka Airlines operates over 100 flights in India. It has an extensive network and flies to Delhi, Goa, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kochi, Mumbai, Chennai and other cities.

The other point that Mr Soni mentioned in regards to Sri Lanka was that disturbances in the North East part of the country are over. There is peace and country is moving fast towards economic development.

Sri Lanka has beautiful beaches and its people are very hospitable. English is widely spoken and also added that they are fond of Indian music and love Indian movies.

He further added, India and Sri Lanka have a unique Free Trade Agreement. It has yielded fruitful results. Indo – Lanka FTA came into force in 2000. Bilateral trade was about US $ 500 million, which has now crossed US$ 3.45 billion. We are confident that bilateral trade would cross US$ 5 billion by the year 2010. However, he wanted that the FTA should not hurt the domestic industry but should be a win-win situation for both countries.

Inspite of disturbances in the region for a long time, Sri Lanka has been able to attract a fair degree of investments from all over the world. Sri Lanka registered the highest ever FDI worth of US $ 889 million, in spite of the challenging global economic environment in 2008. Many leading Indian companies have investments and set up the joint ventures in Sri Lanka in diverse industries and many more new investments are coming in. These joint ventures are meeting the Sri Lanka requirements as well as exporting their products to India and other countries.

India and Sri Lanka are moving towards Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) hoping that both countries would be able to sign CEPA soon. CEPA could play a pivotal role in enhancing bilateral economic cooperation and it will be beneficial to set up long - term bilateral goals.

Last but not least, Mr Soni said he would like to see more and more Indian Corporates to look at Sri Lanka as a destination for organizing meetings, conferences and other mega events.