National Chamber of Exporters suggests India should offer duty free access for all SL products for next 5 years

The National Chamber of Exporters of Sri Lanka (NCE) yesterday suggested India should enable duty free access for Sri Lankan products for the next five years.

Issuing a statement ahead of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s three-day visit starting today, the NCE said granting duty free access to all products made in Sri Lanka and reducing non-tariff barriers, wouldn’t have a major impact for India.



“Sri Lanka being a small island nation with $ 16.5 billion export basket, overall impact to the world’s largest populated country with $ 3.8 trillion GDP will be negligible,” NCE said.

“At a time, India is pursuing ‘duty free’ access for their products with many nations across the world, there is no doubt for India to consider our humble request favourably specially at this crucial hour with due consideration. We believe such a blessing would help our nation to achieve required export growth, a platform for SMEs to grow at a time foreign financial institutions are supporting SMEs and entrepreneurs to drive export growth to strengthen the country’s foreign exchange earnings,” the NCE statement emphasised.

Following is the full statement:

The strong bond interweaved between Sri Lanka and India goes back centuries with a foundation that cannot be shaken, with deep roots into Buddhism, architecture, music, culture, trading and what not. The most admirable is the strong relationship sustained between the countries for decades where dividends are enjoyed to date mutually.

It is quite reassuring and proud to have India as our immediate neighbour, closed ally, positioned at the forefront of economic growth in the global index, providing crucial support to Sri Lanka when needed, be it, financial, healthcare, food supplies, strategic investments and lately, being the largest source of in-bound tourism to Sri Lanka.

Whilst South Asia has successfully driven their economies racing towards the pinnacle of economic and infrastructure development, Sri Lanka has had its own set of challenges since independence, struggling with political, economic grievances, exacerbated by the Easter bombings, global pandemic and the political crisis. Such events along with many other domestic economic and financial management culminated in a severe financial crisis, bringing the country’s progress to a virtual standstill.

The exporter community in the country, the main driver of foreign exchange earner have sailed through turbulent tides and storms in the backdrop of what is explained, been frustrated with the stagnant export revenue over a decade, yet encouraged by the spirit of exporter community working together towards a common goal to propel the economy forward for our nation to have hopes on survival based on our past learning and insights from our regional peers, Bangladesh, Vietnam whose export revenue grown in multiple folds compared to ours.

The exporters have being brain storming, debating, voicing at many forums, active social media campaigns, constructive dialogues with country’s leaders and authorities, decision makers, not just simply to raise our membership issues and concerns but to expose the importance of policy decisions, digitalisation and to propagate most suited strategic steps to achieve not just the organic growth but to achieve a “quantum leap” on our export growth which we observe as the one and only path to catch up for lost time and to be get back on track to be in par with rest of the world, accelerating economic growth in unprecedented momentum on AI and high tech platforms whilst investing billions of dollars.

The time seems right to draw up a few key strategic approaches on the basis of immediate, short term and medium to long term as lately we observe on media almost every country leader across the developed nations from around the world embracing our leaders and openly assuring, extending their heartiest support to Sri Lanka and our people to get back on feet, however , it’s time that we truly determine to draw the line between financial aid cum strategic sustainable support to ensure mistakes are not repeated and the importance of walking the path towards self-sustenance and not entirely financial aid -dependent.

As per our evaluation, one of the best solutions to reach exponential growth on our exports seems just sitting by our side, it’s none-other than our immediate neighbour, our best friend, the world’s biggest democracy, India, who always come forward to assist our country in need and Sri Lanka too has reciprocated by opening up many investment avenues, renewable energy platforms, oil refinery, fuel storage tanks, fuel distribution, port terminals, ports and airport developments to strengthen the two economies. 

In the light of strong friendship going back for centuries, no doubt that India is the only country to make the difference for Sri Lanka and to be the springboard by offering “Duty free access to all products made in Sri Lanka” and to reduce non-tariff barriers, by agreeing for such and Sri Lanka being a small island nation with $ 16.5 billion export basket, overall impact to world’s largest populated country with $ 3.8 trillion GDP will be negligible. 

At a time, India is pursuing “duty free” access for their products with many nations across the world, there is no doubt for India to consider our humble request favourably specially at this crucial hour with due consideration of what is explained above. We believe such a blessing would help our nation to achieve required export growth, a platform for SMEs to grow at a time foreign financial institutions are supporting SMEs and entrepreneurs to drive export growth to strengthen the country’s foreign exchange earnings.