The Colombo Port City looks forward to increasing local footfall from the current permitted single visit allowed within the year, to allowing two visits for each arrival within the year, Colombo Port City Economic Commission (CPCEC) Director of Finance Ruwan Karunaratne told the Committee on Public Finance (COPF) at its last meeting (21).

Addressing regulatory concerns, Karunaratne explained the reasoning behind the proposed changes to visit limits. He said: "In regulatory concerns, as I mentioned earlier, the restriction was single visit within a year. Because of the numbers that came in average spend, we proposed some regulation amendments. We believe allowing a Sri Lankan to spend their money in Sri Lanka would retain some part of the foreign currency in the country."

It was found that less than 3% of arrivals spend money at the duty-free shops. Karunaratne also disclosed financial details regarding the commission's earnings. He stated: "Out of the total gross turnover, the operators have paid thus far $ 1.2 million to the commission in royalty fees, on the gross sales."

Colombo Port City Economic Commission (CPCEC) Chairperson Harsha Amarasekera explained that the commission has asked duty-free operators to launch special programmes aimed at attracting outbound tourists. He said: "We have asked the duty free operators to have a special programme to entice the outbound tourists to also come here and use it, in order to expand that."

Karunaratne further pointed to the goal of retail expansion by attracting both tourists and residents. He noted: "One of the objectives of the act is that we create a touristic shopping destination, under Section 5 G."

He expressed strong dissatisfaction with the current footfall conversion rate. He stated: "We are not happy at all with the 3%, we want that to increase. As per the agreements that we have signed with the operators, the commission can push them to go in for promotional campaigns to bring more tourists in."

He  revealed future plans involving one operator's parent company. He said: "In the pipeline, one of the operator's parent companies handles more than 80 million outbound tourists a year, through which they handle cruise liner passengers as well. They have a plan to bring cruise liners to the country in 2028. These are the things that they are to take to increase tourists."

The chairperson further explained that the commission's need is to make duty-free shopping more appealing to outbound tourists. He said: "Our need is to get the outbound tourists to actually visit the [duty free] and have an array of goods that they would want to buy. At the moment, we feel that the goods on offer are not sufficient to attract them. That is because all those other operators don't see sufficient turnover in order to make [more] goods available."

He expressed hope that increased inbound travel expenditure would improve the product range. He said: "So hopefully with some of the inbound travel expenditure coming in, some of those higher value goods will be made available at the duty free outlet, that would in turn then make it a more viable and attractive proposition for the tourists in Colombo, to actually go and spend some time there, buy it and collect it at the point of departure. That's the hope."

Amarasekera clarified the regulatory changes that have been introduced. He said: "The changes that came into the regulations. Previously there was only a single visit that could happen within a year, now there are multiple visits per year, for each arrival into the country. Within four days of arrival, the passenger can go twice."