Hon. Basil Rajapaksa, Minister of Economic Development
His Worship, Mayor of Dehiwala and Mount Lavinia
Mr. Anura Siriwardena, Secretary, Ministry Industry and Commerce
Mr. Sanjay Tiwari, President, Indian CEO Forum
Office Bearers of the Indian CEO Forum,
Members of the Forum
Ladies & Gentlemen

It gives me immense pleasure to participate in today's event to launch the “Indian CEO Forum-Sri Lanka”. 

We are deeply honoured by the presence of Hon. Basil Rajapaksa. 

Indian companies and entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka have contributed significantly in furthering bilateral trade and economic ties. The Sri Lankan economy has benefitted by your presence. It is laudable that you have decided to organise yourself formally and come together on a common platform to promote and contribute to the economic growth of Sri Lanka.

Each one of you is an Ambassador of India in this wonderful country.  You have adopted Sri Lanka as your second home. Overseas Indians build bridges of friendship and cooperation between India and the countries they reside in. I sincerely hope that the Indian CEO Forum will serve as a symbiotic link that binds our two countries and will further enhance our substantive economic engagement in terms of mutually beneficial trade and investment, thereby creating a win-win situation for both countries.

India and Sri Lanka enjoy a vibrant and growing economic and commercial partnership, with both trade and investment expanding greatly in recent years. Since the operationalization of the India – Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in 2000, trade alone has multiplied by as much as 8 times, crossing the milestone of US$ 5 billion in 2011-12. The FTA has thus proved to be a real engine of growth for bilateral commercial interaction. 

In 2011-12, India’s imports from Sri Lanka went up by almost 45% to cross US$ 720 million, making Sri Lanka the largest source of merchandise from the South Asian region for India. This is a big jump from US$ 45 million imports in 2000-01, when Sri Lanka occupied the 4th rank as an import source for India in the region. In fact, Sri Lanka’s exports to India increased from about US $ 50 million in 2000 to about US$ 720 million in 2011-12.  There is no doubt that the FTA brought significant benefits to both sides. 

Likewise, top Indian companies have displayed great interest in Sri Lanka, investing in the country across sectors such as infrastructure, manufacturing, services, and construction. The cumulative FDI approvals for Indian investments stand about US$ 1 billion since 2003, with investment inflows of US$160 million in 2012. Nearly US$ 2 billion worth of FDI has been committed by Indian companies for the next five years or so.  The investment flow is by no means one-sided as Sri Lankan companies too are finding opportunities in the large Indian markets, leveraging FTA provisions.

In fact, bilateral economic cooperation today extends across multiple areas of engagement, including trade in goods and services, tourism, infrastructure, education, science and technology, and agriculture. Air connectivity has gone up manifold and there are about 120 flights a week between Colombo and eight destinations in India; almost one-fifth of tourist arrivals in Sri Lanka is from India.  The beneficial synergy in bilateral economic relations is best illustrated by the container traffic of Colombo Port, which handles over thirty percent of container transshipment business of India; India-linked cargo, in turn, accounts for over three-fourths of the Port’s total container transshipment volume. 

This dynamic economic relationship is set for further expansion. During the visit of Hon. Anand Sharma, Minister of Commerce, Industry & Textiles, Government of India, to Sri Lanka in August 2012, both sides decided to take several key steps to further deepen trade and investment relations, including by focusing on increasing Sri Lanka’s export capacity with promotion of manufacturing of products like automobile parts, engineering products and pharmaceuticals with Indian investment and forging linkages across the production and supply chains of the two countries. The two governments have constituted a Joint Task Force to take forward these proposals and the first meeting of the Task Force took place on 24 June, 2013 in Colombo during the visit of our Commerce Secretary. 

We have also set for ourselves an ambitious target of doubling bilateral trade to reach US$ 10 billion in next three years. At the eighth meeting of the India-Sri Lanka Joint Commission held on 22 January 2013 in New Delhi, we agreed to hold intensive consultations towards forging a special economic partnership for comprehensive economic engagement, taking trade, tourism and investment relations to the next level. Recently, we had a successful visit of Commerce Secretary of India   during which both sides discussed the way forward to carry forward the economic agenda. 

I hope that Indian CEO Forum will actively partner with us to further strengthen the economic relations of the two countries by encouraging more Indian companies to invest in various sectors in Sri Lanka and likewise guide Sri Lankan entrepreneurs willing to do business in India or invest in India. The two countries will benefit by enhancing the existing synergies.

I would like to once again thank the Indian CEO Forum for inviting me today and wish the Forum all the very best in its future endeavours.

Colombo