Sri Lanka’s main investment promotion agency the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka says it is tackling to cater to project requirements of BOI approved companies owing to lack of available resources mainly land , buildings and raw materials, know-how and most importantly, lack of skilled manpower in the country.
Manilal Ranasinghe, Deputy Director, Investment Promotion of BOI said so at a pre-budget seminar, organised by Business Economics Faculty of University of Jayewardenepura under the theme, ‘Striving for Export Competitiveness’.
The event was held at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute in Colombo on Monday. He said there are about 768 projects in commercial operation under the section 16 of BOI Act while another 1,700 projects are in operation in Sri Lanka under the section 17 of BOI Act.
In addition, there are about another 200 projects awaiting commercial operation in Sri Lanka.
He also expressed hope that these projects will commence operations- in Sri Lanka in another 6-9 months.
“There are about 2,500 projects, operating under the BOI arm at the moment,” he said.
In terms of projects in commercial operation under the section 17 of BOI Act, manufacturing and apparel sectors have taken the leading position, representing 50 percent of total projects.
In terms of projects in commercial operation under the section 17 of BOI Act , there are about 405 projects in the apparel sector while 442 in manufacturing sector, 308 in utilities and infrastructure sector and 166 projects in tourism sector.
In addition, there are about 143 and 133 projects in knowledge services and agriculture sectors respectively.
He these 2,500 projects have created almost 500,000 direct employment opportunities.
In addition to that, these projects have also created another 500,000 indirect job opportunities in the area of transport operations, canteen operations, container handling, special services and many more.
He said further that there are about 50,000 job opportunities available at 16 BOI projects at the moment.As per the targets, set during the period 2018-2020, BOI sources said it is expected to achieve US $ 2.5 billion FDI (Estimated FDI) in 2019 and US $ 3 billion in 2020. In terms of realized FDI, BOI is expected to achieve US $ 1.6 billion in 2018, US $ 1.8 billion in 2019 and US $ 2 billion in 2020.In terms of exports by BOI companies, BOI is expected to receive US $ 7,900 million, US $ 8,000 million and US $ 8,400 million in year 2018 , 2019 and 2020 respectively.
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