India to help Sri Lanka upgrade skills

By P.K. Balachandran, IANS

Colombo : Sri Lanka Monday accepted India's offer to help its people upgrade their technical and managerial skills so that the island's economic growth and export potential are not retarded by a shortage of trained manpower.

Minister for Enterprise Development Sarath Amunugama accepted the offer by Indian Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh at a meeting here.

Sri Lankan officials, entrepreneurs and educationists, would meet representatives of Indian private and public educational institutions in Bangalore within the next three months, the two ministers told the media here.

Ramesh, who is now in Sri Lanka with a delegation of top Indian entrepreneurs and business executives to explore possibilities of collaborating in the fields of textiles, IT and education, said that one of the basic drawbacks in Sri Lanka was an acute shortage of technical and managerial skills.

He also deplored the laid back approach to new projects in the island, which was preventing projects from taking off.

Representatives of Reliance, Larsen and Toubro, Mahindra, The Aditya Birla Group, Indo-Rama, Vardhaman, Arvind Mills, Quatrro, and Virtusa are part of the Indian team talking to the Sri Lankan government and the private sector.

Indian textile companies want Sri Lankan garment manufacturers to think of building symbiotic relations with them so that India and Sri Lanka can together compete with other countries.

Indian textile companies would like Sri Lankan garment manufacturers to buy the basic textiles from India and not China or Southeast Asia as they do now.

But Sri Lankan garment manufacturers say that Indian textiles do not offer the variety and types they want. The two sides decided to sit together and thrash out the matter over the next two or three days.

Indians are also pleading for a joint South Asian approach to the international market in textiles and garments so that the intensely competitive global market can be exploited to mutual advantage.

Sri Lankan textile companies, on the other hand, would like India to allow more Sri Lankan garments to enter the Indian market. Right now, only three million pieces a year are allowed, which is too small, the Sri Lankans complain. They would like at least eight million pieces to be allowed.

The Indian minister said that while the Sri Lankan case was valid, India had a strong garments sector too, whose sentiments would have to be respected in a democracy.

The Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), which already has a presence in Sri Lanka, offered to help Sri Lanka modernize its refinery at Sapugaskanda.

Minister Jairam Ramesh said that the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between India and Sri Lanka had been a model for the region and added that it was among the factors that had helped bring Indian investments to the tune of $220 million to the island.

Investments worth another $360 million are in the pipeline. Investments totalling $2 billion were under discussion, he added.

The FTA and better economic ties between the two countries had resulted in Sri Lankan companies like Brandix, MAS Holdings, Damro and Ceylon Biscuits investing in India.

The two countries were hoping to finalise the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) by April, and sign it by the summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to be held in Sri Lanka in July-August this year, Ramesh said.

The Sri Lankan Minister for Enterprise Development Sarath Amunugama described the visit of "top flight" entrepreneurs from India as "historic" and said that the future lay in more private sector initiatives.

Private initiatives were necessary especially in the field of education because speed was the need of the hour to bridge the skills gap, he said.

Amunugama urged India to help Sri Lanka get an extension of the GSP Plus status in the European Union countries, which is due to expire this year. Indian textile manufacturers would be able to gain from Sri Lanka's continued privileged access to the European market, he said.

Source: indianmuslims.info