Sri Lanka's finance minister, Mangala Samaraweera told the IMF annual meeting in Washington, that the government had plans to widen its Free Trade Agreements (FTA) with India and Pakistan, as well as signing new agreements with Singapore and China.
“Measures are being taken to boost market access through deepening and widening the current Free Trade Agreements (FTA) with India; invigorating the FTA with Pakistan; signing new economic partnership agreements with China and Singapore. This will result in preferential access to markets with over 3 billion people, which is expected to boost domestic and foreign investments going forward through leveraging the trade/investment nexus,” he was quoted by the Daily Mirror as saying.
Stating that Sri Lanka would work with the UN And other institutions, such as the IMF, Mr Samaraweera said "Sri Lanka’s broad development strategy had focused on a three-pillared agenda i.e. democratization, reconciliation, and sustainable and equitable development with employment generation that transmits the benefits of growth across the wider society."
“Sri Lanka’s growth model would be private sector driven with exports and Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) as key pillars, supported by technological advancement and innovation. In this process, we are committed to improve human capital and skills, set up globally recognized regulatory mechanisms and investment practices, in addition to the improvement of physical infrastructure, and create the best possible enabling environment for Sri Lanka to attract more businesses, trade and investment to become a higher income country,” he said.
