Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa called the country’s private sector to make bold investments moving away from conservative and low-risk strategies to live up to its reputation as the engine of growth.
“With the Government as an enabler, the private sector must expand its role in the economy. It has often been pointed out that the private sector is the engine of growth.
However, for the private sector to truly live up to this reputation, it must make bold investments that can potentially realise outstanding returns, instead of continually adopting conservative, low-risk strategies,” Rajapaksa urged.
He was delivering the keynote speech at the Sri Lanka Economic Summit kicked off today.
He affirmed that the Government would play its part to unleash the full potential of the private sector.
He went on to note that the Budget for 2021 contains a range of initiatives designed with this in mind.
” The Agriculture, Fisheries, and Poultry sectors will be exempted from income tax for the next five years. Improving productivity and enhancing earnings from these sectors is critical. The private sector must introduce new technologies that enable farmers to produce more and to target lucrative new export markets.
Tax concessions will be granted for strategic investments larger than ten million US dollars in value for agricultural product processing, IT, dairy, fabric, tourism, and export industries. Exports are being strongly encouraged through the removal of import taxes on required raw materials, machinery, and equipment used by direct and indirect exporters.
New investment in digital infrastructure is being strongly encouraged. Companies in the Information Technology space must make full use of these incentives to expand and seek new markets for Sri Lankan talent. Companies must also invest more in IT education and training,” Rajapaksa detailed.