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What we export, 85% of the world also exports: Harsha

25 Feb 2019

Non-Cabinet Minister of Economic Reforms and Public Distribution Dr. Harsha De Silva claimed on Friday that Sri Lanka’s customer-driven export products were no different to those produced by 86% of all countries around the world. “In this world that we compete, what Sri Lanka produces, 86% of other countries also produce. It is nothing really grand,” he said, addressing a public seminar on Friday. De Silva noted that despite the availability of sophisticated technology, Sri Lanka’s export products remain customer-driven instead of producer-driven. “Less than 5% of our exports are technologically advanced. I think it is something like 1%,” he said. He noted that although Sri Lanka should look for a paradigm shift towards producer-driven products, there was no political will to initiate the reforms necessary to create a conducive business environment. “We are going in the wrong direction. We must try to reform but there is no political will to reform.” He also lamented the limited focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and emphasised the importance of providing required skills to the population to be able to produce complex products, in order to compete with other countries with technologically advanced export products. “We cannot compete with the Koreans, Israelis, Irish, Japanese, and I dare not to say, even the Bangladeshis,” he said. Sri Lanka’s export revenue hit an all-time high of $ 17 billion in 2018, a growth of 15% from a year earlier. However, it still fell well short of the Export Development Board (EDB) target for the year, by $ 430 million. Sri Lanka’s main exports commodities are textiles and apparel, tea and spices, diamonds, emeralds, coconut products, rubber manufactures, and fish – few of the country’s traditional products. Despite its ambitions of becoming an export-oriented country, Sri Lanka’s export basket has remained little changed since the 1980s, with little focus on products which require advanced technology.

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