Dialog Axiata signs $150 m agreement with BOI

Dialog Axiata signed a $150 million investment agreement with the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka mainly targeting the upgrade and expansion its fibre broadband network.

Representatives of Dialog Axiata and the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka sign the agreement Pic: Chintaka Kumarasinghe.

With this new investment the cumulative investment of the company in Sri Lanka passed $1 billion. Appreciating the company’s contribution to the economic development the Minister of Economic Development Basil Rajapaksa attended the agreement signing occasion held in Colombo last week.

Chairman of Dialog Axiata Datuk Azzat Kamaludin said that progressive regulatory framework in the BOI and the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (TRC) contributed to the company’s success in Sri Lanka and to achieve this $ 1 billion investment milestone. He said that the talented and dedicated work force in Sri Lanka is a key factor for investing in Sri Lanka. To make money is not the only criteria for investment. If there is the right environment and right people, investments will flow in, he said.

Dialog is a subsidiary of Malaysia’s Axiata (AXIA.KL). The company first invested in Sri Lanka in 1994 and became the leading telco company in Sri Lanka. Dialog greatly contributed to the growth in the telco sector by introducing new technologies in Sri Lanka and the region including launching of first digital cellular network in 1995 and the first 3G network in 2006.

The company announced this new investment in an environment where the telco sector has become highly competitive, profitability declining and analysts do not expect much investments in the future. The chairman of the BOI Jayampathi Bandaranayake said that the telco sector is vital for accelerating the economic growth of the country. Today mobile phones are productively used by people in all sectors even by farmers and fishers to get market information. It caters to the IT BPO industry that earns foreign exchange and provides employment opportunities to educated youth. Further development and expansion of IT infrastructure is important for the booming tourism industry as well because connectivity is vital, Bandaranayake said.

Sri Lanka welcomes respectable investors such as Dialog and is proud of its achievements passing the $ 1 billion investment mark. Dialog has been here long years, during the good as well as the bad times the country went through and contributed to the development of the country by adding over 10 percent new investments annually, he said.

(GW)