Import-export Trade imbalance
At a Cabinet press briefing on TV on May 13, it was heartening to hear that the Import-export Trade imbalance was to be looked into seriously. Leave alone overseas products drowning our country, our products overseas are tantamount to finding a needle in a haystack. Foreign products come from countries that don’t reciprocate trade practices in spite of bi-lateral agreements.
Most of these imports compare favourably with our own products and are marketed at prices hindering local development. Some products, however tempting, are alien to one’s taste and have exorbitant prices. Imported dairy products and tinned fish—not forgetting fruits—are classic examples which are damaging the progress of our products.
Even though we are an island surrounded by the ocean with a variety of fish sufficient to drown our paradise, we import tinned fish from countries similar to ours to an extent of 10 times our annual catch. All this is possible because of the sharp marketing strategies adopted by foreign exporters, and our gullible but corrupt importers.
We even have the ‘Export Development Board’ which is quick to find out about foreign trade exhibitions to arrange capable competent delegates to handle these very important international events to promote our products. But like our ambassadors, they only have a vague idea that our traditional exports come from trees and tea bushes. In short, if we are to analyse the results of our trade promotion activities -- the total value may not cover exhibition expenditures!
We have two prominent Chambers of Commerce which are experts at issuing Certificates of Origin (CO) and negotiating the lowest possible prices for our traditional exports. I wonder what CO was issued for the stinking hospital waste exported to
Sri Lanka from the UK. These institutions do not appear to have any interest in our other agricultural products. These past few weeks we saw the waste of our own healthy colourful agricultural products, provided to us by our toiling farmers under various hardships. Such produce is very much in demand by the World Food Programme. But there’s not been a comment to date from these various established institutions, supposedly guided by economic pundits, on counter actions to countries that depend only on yams for their survival.
We have countless NGOS living on donations paid by various governments from taxpayers’ money to serve people in distress. But they are in action only when there is a profitable uncontrolled armed conflict, with emphasis to the displaced people and overblown financial help more purely for their personal benefit with no accountability.
The government should call for a list of all products exported to or imported from Sri Lanka from all our ambassadors to check the trade imbalance and the necessity for such trading.
MELVILLE PERERA KOHUWALA