BOI

Dr. Lakshman Jayaweera has been appointed as Chairman/ Director General BOI.

DrJayaweera’s appointment as Chairman/ Director General of the BOI by President Mahinda Rajapaksa comes at a crucial juncture of time when Sri Lanka, having emerged from three decades of conflict in 2009, needs to effectively promotes investment to achieve the goals set by the Government for the BOI.

Victoria Higher Education (Private) Limited (VHEL) has been established in Sri Lanka, sponsored by the BOI, to launch and operate Victoria Higher Education Campus (VHEC), a Higher Education Institution, which will deliver degree programmes from Greenwich University in London, UK.

The BOI announced a new strategy to raise FDI in Sri Lanka to the desired level of four to five percent of GDP over the next three year period.

The FDI this year is expected to reach the highest ever achieved by the country and will be well in excess of one billion US dollars, the BOI said. The changes aim to focus the BOI’s resources on priority investment projects most critical to national development - thereby accelerating job creation and income growth in all areas of the country.

The Board of Investment Sri Lanka (BOI) targets increased investment value for this year.

The BOI is looking at more investments this year and expects over US $ one billion worth of investments by the end of 2011, Board of Investment Deputy Director General Investment and Promotion A M C Kulasekera told Daily News Business.

The Board of Investment of Sri Lanka in collaboration with the Ministry of Labour Relations and Productivity Promotion organized a job fair at the Mahinda Rajapaksa Conference Hall, Wellawaya recently. This job fair was organized in Parallel with the ‘Deyata Kirula’ National Exhibition, scheduled to be held in February, next year in the Monaragala District.

The BoI has reassured all investors that all contractual obligations entered with the Board of Investment (BoI) will continue to be honoured.

With the investment portfolio increasing in Sri Lanka, the Board of Investment (BOI) is looking at changing its current incentive resume, a senior official said.

This comes in the wake of a large number of investors expressing interest in coming down to Colombo to set up office or establish business links.

The Board of Investment of Sri Lanka granted investment approval to Senit Technologies Limited and Vingrows Business Solutions Limited to commence operations under the BOI.

The Board of Investment of Sri Lanka (BOI) Chairman/Director General JD Bandaranayake will address AmCham members on ‘BOI’s new investment promotion strategy’ at AmCham’s monthly luncheon meeting on August 18 at Hilton Colombo.

The Board of Investment of Sri Lanka is now implementing an investment promotion strategy focusing on national development. A.M.C Kulasekera, Deputy Director General of the BOI, said the main challenge that lay ahead was to harness future Foreign Direct Investment ( FDI) to meet some of the national development goals of the government. Currently the bulk of Sri Lanka’s investment goes into infrastructure, port development, power generation, telecommunications, manufacturing, services including the IT and BPO sectors and tourism, he added .

The Board of Investment (BOI) is holding a mega 3-day investment conference next month for about 15 multinational fund manager and equity firms, in a move to promote Sri Lanka as an investment destination, BOI sources said.

The Board of Investment of Sri Lanka (BOI) Deputy Director General A. M. C. Kulasekera, addressed the Discover Sri Lanka Conference 2010 held recently, where over 25 fund managers of international repute participated. Kulasekera's address covered the role of the BOI in Sri Lanka's economy and gave prominence to the country's resilience during the three decades of conflict. Sri Lanka had achieved a total of US$ 5.8 billion in 30 years in spite of the ongoing conflict and indeed could have achieved five times that quantum of investment had there been peace in the country.

An IT sector delegation led by the Board of Investment recently took some important steps in strengthening contacts and facilitating investments to develop Jaffna as a knowledge hub.

The IT/BPO industry in Sri Lanka is witnessing tremendous growth due to the expansion of the global BPO industry. This is further supplemented with the availability of a highly skilled talent pool at a competitive cost to cater to the needs of the industry.

Malaysia will be one of the main investors in Sri Lanka within next five to ten years in the telecommunication sector.

The Board of Investment promotional strategy will focus mainly on 5 areas during the next five years, which include dairies, tourism and leisure, education, IT/BPO and urban infrastructure development. Since the Tourism sector has the potential of becoming a major contributor in the economic development of the country, the government aims at building up this industry so that it may offer a world standard product.

BOI has collectively reviewed its investment strategy to fit in with the new priority sectors articulated by the Government, said Chairman / Director General, BOI, Jayampathi Bandaranayake in an interview with Sunday Observer.

Jayampathi Bandaranayake

Excerpts :

Q: What measures have you taken to improve the BOI structure ?

A: BOI has collectively reviewed its investment strategy to fit in with the new priority sectors articulated by the government. These are tourism, urban development, IT/BPO/KPO, agriculture, fisheries, dairy and agri processing, education and knowledge.