Pravir takes over Industrial Association Chairmanship

The 21st Annual General Meeting of the Industrial Association of Sri Lanka (IASL) was held on 16 August 2012 at the Cinnamon Lakeside Colombo.

The Industrial Association of Sri Lanka (IASL) is the Apex body under the aegis of The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce which represents industrial and manufacturing interests in Sri Lanka. The Association was formed in 1991 and constitutes well-known industrial organizations in the Country. The objective of the Association is to represent manufactures’ interests and promote a condusive industrial policy environment.

Industrial Association of Sri Lanka’s newly elected Chairman Pravir Samarasinghe (second from right) with Chief Guest at the IASL’s Annual General Meeting IFC Country Manager Sri Lanka and Maldives Adam Sack (centre),  Immediate Past Chairman Noel Selvanayagam (second from left) and Senior Vice Chairman Nilam Jayasinghe (right).  Ceylon Chamber of Commerce’s Rohan Casichetty is also present

Adam Sack, Country Manager, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, International Finance Corporation was the Chief Guest. In his address Mr Sack emphasized the need to create a world class investment climate including the ease of doing business and establishing a proper industrial policy to attract desired levels of FDI to achieve sustainable economic development.

He illustrated many examples of Country’s encouraging and protecting emerging industries that have comparative advantages and thereby developing leading multinationals and word market leaders.

Pravir Samarasinghe, Swadeshi Industrial Works PLC and CEO of Overseas Realty (Ceylon) PLC took over as the Chairman of the Association from Mr. Noel Selvanayagam, Senok Trade Combine (Pvt) Ltd.

The newly elected Chairman, Pravir Samarasinghe in his address emphasized that industry and manufacture of actual tangible goods have true potential to create real value addition to the economy, real employment generation to our workforce, and bring about a meaningful sustainable contribution to the upliftment of our economy and the living standards of our people.

Samarasinghe added that “today, the industry sector contributes about 30% to GDP and has been growing at an average of 10%p.a during the last few years. Likewise manufacturing inclusive of the apparel sector contributes nearly 75%to our exports.

This clearly demonstrates the sheer magnitude and importance of industry to our national economy at large. Therefore it is very important that we nurture, protect, encourage and foster the growth of industrial activities through the implementation of a sound industrial policy”.

He further stated that “we as an Association will continue to engage all stakeholders including the government and policy makers; productivity, to foster this enabling industrial policy framework and safeguard the interest of industrialists and manufacturers in general and our membership in particular.

We will also make representations to the Government to address the challenges and impediments we face and to create a more suitable climate for all local industrialists to compete in a fair playing field under predictable and stable macro-economic conditions”.

Samarasinghe believes that there is tremendous potential for export oriented manufacture and towards this end he urged industrialists to develop their competitive advantages, diversify their product base and broaden the markets. Further he added “for example, at present only 5% of our exports are to India.

This large and fast growing market alone offer huge opportunities for our industrialists. Exporting branded and finished goods to the large consumer market in India or intermediary and components to the growing manufacturing base in India should be aggressively pursued.

We will as an Association continue our role of advocacy to ensure greater linkages are built with Indian partners and easier entry is established into the Indian sub-continent where almost 23%of the world population lives”.

He acknowledged, that in the recent past the policy makers had initiated a number of programs and introduced a plethora of incentives to encourage regional industrial development, SMEs, export oriented and import substitution industries including certain strategic sectors such as cement, pharmaceuticals, fabric and milk powder. These were cited as very positive moves and the private sector was encouraged by them.

Nilam Jayasinghe, Ceylon Biscuits Ltd and Dinesh Dharmadasa Ceylon Tobacco Co PLC were elected as the Senior Vice Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Association respectively.

The following companies were elected to serve on the Executive Committee of the Association for the year 2012: Alpha Industries Ltd; Associated Motorways (Pvt.) Ltd; Brown and Co PLC; Haycarb PLC; Hettigoda Industries (Pvt.) Ltd; Litro Gas Lanka Ltd; NDB Bank PLC; Nestle Lanka PLC; Piramal Glass Ceylon PLC; Richard Pieris and Co PLC; The Lion Brewery Ceylon PLC; Senok Trade Combine (Pvt.) Ltd; Singer Sri Lanka PLC and Unilever Sri Lanka.