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| Sunday, 7 August 2005 |
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Snags in local printing industry to be overcome soon by Elmo Leonard All existing factors such as tariff structures or others which impede the local printing industry from entering the enormous print market overseas, will be speedily removed, Secretary to the Ministry of Finance and Planning Dr. P. B. Jayasundera said. Dr. Jayasundera was replying to assertions made by president, Sri Lanka Association of Printing, Keerthi Gunawardane that duty on raw materials and tariff structures binding the printing industry barred it from supplying the demand for printed matter in the outside world. Dr. Jayasundera called upon the printing industry at its annual Print 2005 Awards Presentation, to make out a draft of the requests they wanted to put forward to the government. Gunawardane said that in the past few years, Sri Lanka made a dramatic improvement in her quality of printing. All types of printing and technology were available here. At present there is a $300 billion market for printing worldwide. If Sri Lanka could get 2 percent of the global market it would contribute in large measure to the national economy. Asian countries were largely meeting the needs of international print products market. First, it was Singapore which had the lion share of that market. Then Malaysia came in, taking a large slice of the global demand for printing. Later, it was Thailand which got a sizeable market share, followed by China and India. But, Sri Lanka must improve her quality of printing if she is to gain a foothold in the worldwide market. The printing of the Sri Lanka telephone directory costs around Rs 350 million to Rs 400 million, Gunawardane said. Now, half of the printing of the annual telephone directors is undertaken in Sri Lanka and it is considered that soon Sri Lanka would be in a position strong enough to print her entire requirement of telephone directories. Four Sri Lankan printers had got together to print half of the local telephone directories. Printing and packaging play a large part in the forex earned from exports. In past decades, a high percentage of Ceylon tea produced was exported in bulk form. With the ongoing improvement in printing and packaging, larger amounts of tea are being exported in packaged or value added form. The Finance Ministry secretary said that the local printing industry was a large business as the industry had 4,000 printing establishments, counting 40,000 employees. He promised that the government would recognise this industry better and enable it to reach the international market for printing. Sri Lanka needs more than an 8 percent (annual) economic growth to maintain her new status as an emerging market, he said. Recent components towards heightened economic growth are the Free Trade Agreements with India and Pakistan and the addition of 2,000 lines of apparel to the European Union. Another would be to establish Sri Lanka as a printing hub to the region, Dr. Jayasundera said. |
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