Exports lull due to falling global markets: Malwatte

• Calls for cross-sectoral move to push exports
• Export Minister’s Council still effective: Malwatte
• Emerging markets’ exports fall by 13.5%
• “As an exporter I clinched multinational Marks & Spencer”: Malwatte

EDB Chairperson Indira Malwatte addressing the rank and file of EDB yesterday

Sri Lanka’s present exports lull is due to many reasons but chiefly a throwback from the global market fall. However, achieving national export targets is not a journey of a sole institution but requires a collaborative, cross-sectoral push, as stressed by the new Chairperson of Exports Development Board on 5 November.

“Exports are coming down due to various reasons, but chiefly since the global markets have come down,” announced Indira Malwatte, new Chairperson of EDB, addressing the rank and file of EDB during her first official appearance as the Chairperson last morning at the DHPL Auditorium of the EDB-NDB building. 

“It’s not EDB alone, which I had the privilege to explain to President Maithripala Sirisena on 4 November and I stressed the need for a collaborative, multi-sectoral approach in the planned development efforts to lift our exports. I urged the President to give prominence to exports and called for his help to enlist all the sectoral ministries and institutions to meet national targets. The Export Development Council of Ministers (EDCM) was a beautiful mechanism where ministers from sectors that directly linked to exports sat and formulated targets themselves,” said Malwatte. She added: “Today’s event is like coming home for me. My break from EDB for 10 years is, I think, a blessing in disguise. Before I left the EDB previously, as an EDB official I was instructing exporters what they should be doing to export but when I left EDB and started to successfully export fresh Lankan strawberries to the multinational retailer Marks & Spencer, a benchmark achievement, I experienced the user side of exports – sending such a perishable is a very difficult task to a quality conscious market like the UK. As an exporter, I saw the problems faced by the exporters including the bureaucracy, and my 10 years away from EDB but exposure in the private sector gave me the needed understanding to come back to lead the EDB. I am here to bring back the glory of EDB and our exports. I am pleased that I have a good, motivated team here.”

According to the EDB mandate, the EDB Chairman is supported by 16 members, including the Secretaries of Ministries represented in the Export Development Council of Ministers (EDCM).

OECD reported that the biggest YoY decline in exports of Emerging Markets (EM) since 2008/09 crisis was recorded this March, where EM exports crashed by 13.5%.