The National Chamber and the Polish embassy in Sri Lanka have decided to cooperate to facilitate the deepening of trade relations between the two countries. President National Chamber Asela De Livera and Ambassador of Poland to Sri Lanka Adam Burakowski spoke at the event held at the National Chamber in Colombo 10 on February 26.
Burakowski said “It is a new chapter of our bilateral relations. Poland has always been a friend of Sri Lanka. Poland has been a friend of Sri Lanka forever.” He cited Poland as an important and fast-growing member of the European Union. He said that if the trade was to grow more significantly between the two countries then there would be scope to upgrade the Polish diplomatic infrastructure in the country.
De Livera said “The national chamber has already signed an MOU with the Polish Chamber of Commerce. Our chamber is interested in creating business opportunities in both ways. We are excited about commencing direct flights between Sri Lanka and Poland because of the airline agreement. It would be an important avenue for the establishment of trade and development for both countries.”
“The National Chamber has been at the forefront of providing support to Sri Lankan business enterprises. While supporting the corporate sector as a chamber we have extended great support to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in the country. We provide them with the extensive support of providing them market opportunities both locally and internationally,” he said.
De Livera said “To export we need them to do better packaging. Get them proper standards. They can’t export without international standards. We need help from foreign embassies to get the standards. In Sri Lanka to get proper standards is very expensive. We have introduced a web-based portal for Sri Lankan products and services to reach global market destinations. We started this portal in January. It is somewhat similar to Alibaba.”
“We want to do matchmaking because we find that 75 percent of our local industries are SMEs but unfortunately are SMEs are only about 4-5 percent export-driven. Even our President wants our SMEs to do exports. In China 40 percent of SMEs are exporters. We are very serious about our portal to give a chance for our SMEs to export,” he added.
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