Sri Lanka would target over US$ 1.5 billion foreign direct investments (FDI) for 2017, said Chairman Board of Investment Dumindra Ratnayake.
“We are targeting US$ 5 billion by 2020. The total FDI in 2016 was US$ 801 million.”
Addressing on breakfast meeting in Colombo yesterday he said that after a drop in FDI there has been a ‘pickup’ in 2017.
He said that in the first quarter of 2017 the country attracted US$ 216 million and it increased to US$ 332 million in the second quarter. The third quarter FDI inflows were US$ 443 million.
He said that they are also expecting a mega Japanese investment which would be over Rs. 1 billion and also several other projects.
He also said that they will only look at ethical and environmental friendly projects and would not approve unethical projects.
There was a recycle project for scrap metal for a sizable investment but we did not approve it since we found that the local value additional was minimal and it has environmental issues as well.”
Ratnayake said that since taking over last January several prudent measures were taken to iron out and clear ‘bottle necks’.
He said that there is still an issue at rural level when executing BOI projects due to ‘red tape’ at ‘pradeshiya saba’ level. “We are addressing these issues”. He also said that the present 12 BOI zones are now almost 95% occupied and if a ‘big’ investor comes the BOI do not have any land to offer to them.
“No new zones have being created since 2012 and due to this we are now looking at creating new zones”.
This is why we are now going ahead with the creating of the Rojana Zone in Horana which would be PPP project with a Thailand base company.
He also said that in the last six years more attention had been given to infrastructure related FDI which was over 60%.
“I think that this should be 40% and 60% of FDI should be from the manufacturing. This situation is now shifting in the right direction.”
He said that the Biyagama Zone is today having an issue with regard to water.
“This is because when the zone was planned they did not take in to account the township and the population growth in the area. We are now going recycle water from the zone to be reused in the zone.”
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