WORKING SMART TO ATTRACT FDIS
Dinesh Weerakkody Chairman Board of Investment of Sri Lanka
Q: What initiatives is the Board of Investment (BOI) implementing to attract foreign direct investments (FDIs)? A: There is great potential for investments in the areas of agriculture, tourism, information technology, renewable energy and education.
In addition, the government has committed to an array of important structural reforms to stabilise the crisis. These include enhancing revenue mobilisation, improving tax administration, cost recovery-based energy pricing, safeguarding financial sector stability and providing a stronger social safety net to protect the most vulnerable.
There are also reforms to enhance productivity and competitiveness, streamline the trade and investment environment, unlock growth potential, and address governance and corruption issues.
The BOI has established an Investor Facilitation Centre to streamline and fast track the approval process. It has also accelerated a pro-motional programme to attract 100 ICT companies and reinvestment in 50 existing BOI companies, established industry advisory councils for identified sectors and digitalised key investor service functions to improve the investment climate.
Modernising existing zones to meet international green standards, introducing a partnership finder database and launching a five year resident visa programme are a few other initiatives that have been implemented to attract investments.
The BOI is also working on other initiatives to facilitate investors – including formulating a robust system called Invest Sri Lanka to attract investments to compete with regional countries, provide a skilled workforce to meet the demands of investment projects and introduce an effective system for land allocation for such projects.