Sri Lanka began potent work on entering a historic and a groundbreaking global trade pact that would give the country’s exports a boost similar to another GSP Plus -and this pact is also set to impact a whopping one fifth of global trade in a few years from now.
The Department of Commerce of Sri Lanka forayed the country on 12 July to WTO’s ground-breaking Information Technology Agreement (ITA) that completes its highly successful 20th anniversary global run this month.
“According to the latest reports, today’s exports of global information technology products is bigger than global trade in automotive or pharmaceuticals” stressed Minister of Industry and Commerce Rishad Bathiudeen addressing the launch of two day long in-depth analysis and assessment of Sri Lankan IT industry, IT policy and trade/customs regime organized by the Department of Commerce under him and led by two top experts from WTO Geneva.
“ICT is changing our world including Sri Lanka” said Minister Bathiudeen, and added: “Sri Lanka is rapidly emerging as a world’s ICT destination of choice. The ICT sector of Sri Lanka has become the fourth largest export earner. The export earnings of ICT grew 500% from 2006-from US$ 166 Mn in 2006 to US$ 900 Mn in 2016. The sector now employs over 85000.”
“This is not a run of the mill, general IT sector review of Sri Lanka” stressed DG Commerce Wijeratne, and added: “But is an in-depth analysis of two aspects of our IT-its tariff structure and schedule. WTO ITA has many benefits including innovation, value chain strengthening etc but for Sri Lanka, exports increase and FDI diffusion are the prominent gains. In fact, the commitment of a country to WTO ITA is now a major indicator to draw high FDI quantum to the country.”
WTO’s Xiaobing said: “after the expansion of the ITA, it now includes next-generation semiconductors (MCOs) and many products based on such semiconductors.” WTO’s Shing stressed that the vast array of zero duty on high tech products benefits the country both ways.
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