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Lankan exporters receive crucial support to enter EU-market

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Sri Lankan exporters are getting crucial support from key institutions in Europe to successfully meet with the standards the European importers require when importing goods and services from Sri Lanka.

These sustainability standards are partially politically driven, but they are also more and more consumer and industry driven. Besides, in line with the existing official legally binding standards, European importers require more and more consumer and industry driven standards such as Fair trade, BSCI, SA8000 and IFS.

The Delegation of German Industry and Commerce (AHK Sri Lanka) and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (FNF) co-organized their second conference on “Sustainable Supply Chains as drivers of global competitiveness”, in Colombo on Wednesday.

Since September 2020, the two organizations in cooperation with Loening Human Rights and Responsible Business have conducted several training sessions, individual gap assessments and covered the preconditions for certifications for Sri Lankan exporters in rubber, apparel, and food products sectors. And all project partners agreed to extend the project to the Sri Lankan tourism sector.

Chief Delegate of German Industry and Commerce and Industry in Sri Lanka Andreas Hergenroether said: “The major reason to partner for the initiative is to support Sri Lankan exporters to obtain broader market access and to enable German/European importers to import according to international sustainability standards. Sustainability standards are a reality. They are partially politically driven, but they are also more and more consumer and industry driven”.

Country Head for Sri Lanka and Bangladesh of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom Hubertus von Welck underlined that the initiative “Sustainable supply chains as driver for global competitiveness” had been taken up and was now been extended as a contribution to the restart of the Sri Lankan economy to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic as fast as possible. He emphasised that companies should be open for standards under the UN Guiding Principles and incorporate those in their in-house procedures”.

In a video message German Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives Holger Seubert pointed out the relevance of the subject with regards to the upcoming Supply Chain Law in Germany. “A joint inter-ministerial draft law is to be presented in mid-March to the German parliament. German importers will be under the obligation to continuously verify that their suppliers respect United Nation Guiding Principles (UNGP) of business and human rights. Violations will be sanctioned with penalties up to 10% of the importer’s annual turnover and exclusion from public tenders up to three years.”

During the panel discussion with company representatives of the targeted sectors of apparel, food and tourism, panellists stressed how much their businesses were related to consumer driven sustainability requirements and how important the required documentation of UNGPs conform processes was.



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Stay on course and don’t go back to the past – Dr Indrajit Coomaraswamy

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Former Governor of the Central Bank delivering the keynote address at a high profile Webinar hosted by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka today (24)  said that Sri Lanka must implement the structural reforms proposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) without relaxing like in the past or else we will be in a deeper economic mess.

The webinar was titled ‘What is next for Sri Lanka in the wake of the IMF programme’

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Sustainable economic development goals cannot be achieved unless attention is paid to mitigating climate change – Sagala Ratnayake

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President’s Senior Adviser on National Security and Chief of Presidential Staff  Sagala Ratnayake said sustainable economic development goals cannot be accomplished without taking steps to mitigate climate change.

He said this while participating in the 10,000 sapling planting program organized by the LEO Youth Vision 2048 Club and the LEO Club at the Royal College, Colombo on Thursday (23rd).

This program was organized in view of President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s birthday, which is today (24), and the required plants were distributed to the main schools of the Colombo District.

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SF claims thousands of police and military personnel leaving

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By Saman Indrajith

Thousands of police and military personnel had left the services recently as they did not want to carry out illegal orders, Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka told Parliament yesterday. According to the war-winning army commander 200 policemen have resigned during the past two months and 25,000 soldiers have left the army during the last two years.

“We urged the law enforcement and military officials not to follow illegal orders. We will reinstate them with back pay,” he said.

Fonseka also urged the President and the government MPs not to take people for fools.

“Sri Lanka owes 55 billion dollars to the world. Ranil’s plan is to borrow another seven billion during the next four years. So, in four years we will owe 62 billion to the world.

Ranil and his ministers ask us what the alternative to borrowing is. These are the people who destroyed the economy and society. They must leave. Then, we will find an alternative and develop the country,” he said, adding that the IMF loans had made crises in other nations worse.

“Ranil says that by 2025, we will have a budget surplus as in Japan, Germany and South Korea. These countries are economic power houses, and this comparison is ludicrous.”

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