64% increase in foreign investments – Dy. Minister Lakshman Yapa

Deputy Minister of Economic Development Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena said that since the establishment of the Board of Investment Sri Lanka in 1978, the country has received 7,750 million U.S.Dollars of foreign investments and out of this amount 5,026 Million U.S.dollar investments have been received between 2006 to 3rd quarter of 2012, which cover the period of Mahinda Rajapaksa Presidency. He said that this represent a 64% increase in foreign investments.

The Deputy Minister said that Sri Lanka participated in the World Tourist Mart held in London recently and the Tamil Diaspora aggressively campaigned against visiting Sri Lanka at the Tourist Mart exhibition.  He said that countering their campaign a group of British MPs who visited Sri Lanka recently has spoken to British Media that Sri Lanka is a peaceful and hospitable tourist destination and large scale development activities are being carried out in the Northern and Eastern provinces of the country which were devastated by the tiger terrorists during their 30 years of terrorism.

The Deputy Minister said that up to 26th November over 800,000 tourists visited the country this year registering a 16 percent increase over the same period last year.  Giving the breakdown of the tourists’ visits and growth the Deputy Minister said that there was a 50.3% growth from the United States, 52.3% growth from Canada, 1.9% from Western Europe, 49.6% from Eastern Europe, 3.7% from South Asia.  He said that there was only a reduction by 1.3% from the Middle East and attributed to the turbulent situations existing in many of the Middle East countries.  The Deputy Minister said that despite Tamil Diaspora’s anti SriLankan activities there was a 3.9% increase of tourist arrivals from Britain.

Speaking about the infrastructure development in the tourism sector the Deputy Minister said that 5,023 rooms in the hotel industry are now being constructed and 2,000 rooms will be added to Sri Lanka’s room capacity by the end of this year.  He said that the BOI has received 268 applications for investment in the hotel industry  which include construction of 15,000 rooms under various hotel projects.  The Deputy Minister assured that Sri Lanka’s target of having 40,000 room capacity by the year 2015 will not be a difficult task.