Jan 18, 2016 (LBO) – Sri Lanka is targeting five billion US dollars worth of foreign direct investments (FDI) in the next three years, Minister of Development Strategies and International Trade said.
“We are targeting 5-6 billion US dollars in FDI the next three and I am quite optimistic that we will get there,”Malik Samarawickrama, Minister of Development Strategies and International Trade told reporters in Colombo, Monday.
“It will no doubt be a challenge with the prevailing global climate but we are very positive because now Sri Lanka is well placed to attract this kind of investment as people are also looking for new places,’
“Of course you can’t do things over night and we have a plan for it. Investors want consistent policy not so much the tax breaks. They don’t want the policy to change each time the government changes.”
The Minister says that several road shows have also been planned for this year.
“We have a program to attract investments country wise and will have road shows in Mumbai, Tokyo, Beijing and even Europe and the United States and so on,”
“So within the course of this year we hope to cover 5-6 major countries and at the same time I have been invited to China,”
“They will come up with a program to set up industries – particularly in the Southern and Western regions. They want to have economic zones and bring in the investors themselves.”
He also said that in 2015 FDI was below one billion US dollars.
“FDI was less than a billion US dollars about 700 – 800 million US dollars last year – this is very low.”
Data shows that in 2014 FDI was 1650 million US dollars.
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