Sri Lanka has secured over USD 500 million in Foreign Direct investments from Chinese companies for joint venture projects in the past 10 months. These have come in with technological advances which were never seen in Sri Lanka before.
Chairman Interline Gems (Pvt) Ltd Beruwela, Ratnapura and Galle Road Colombo 3, Ifham Hanif said he made regular visits to China for the sale of gems he saw the novel technology they were adopting to optimise production in various industries.
“As a patriotic citizen running a family business for over 35 years, I realised that Sri Lanka could earn a lot of Foreign exchange by bringing these Chinese companies to Sri Lanka and finding them local partners.
“With this objective in mind I diversified my company to an ‘investment matchmaking company’ and have already brought in several Chinese companies to Sri Lanka who has already started joint ventures.”
One such Chinese company signed an MOU with a leading multinational and has already started converting three wheelers as Eclectic and these three wheelers would be soon available in the local market.
Another Chinese company has joined a local battery maker and is in the process of assembling lithium motorcycle batteries.
The aim of this is to locally assemble lithium motor bicycle batteries which will enable them to convert bikes to electric.
Both these ventures will have over 35% local value addition.
He said that since the economies of scale of these companies are not viable to cater to only the local market these companies will export to India and the region with the tag Made in Sri Lanka.
“In addition to these two ventures, we have also brought in a Chinese tile manufacturer who will make tiles in Sri Lanka collaborating with a local partner and reexporting.
A solar panel manufacturer too will visit Sri Lanka soon along with a leading tire factory looking for a partner to make and export solar panels from Sri Lanka. “They all want to enter Indian market vis Sri Lanka to using the FTA agreement”
There are also several new technologies like cleaning solar panels with robots and also spraying fertiliser via drones and this technology too would be brought to Sri Lanka when he visits China next week.
