Is the European market accessible to Sri Lankan exporters?

The strategy of the Government is to ensure that by 2020 Sri Lanka's industrial sector will be highly value added, knowledge based, internationally competitive, diversified and employing a highly paid skilled workforce. The Government aims at continuous training and retaining of workers in relevant disciplines.

The exports sector will be supported through a more conducive tax regime. Steps are taken to facilitate more market access via multilateral and bilateral trading agreements.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the growth engine of the Sri Lankan economy with the country's current conducive state for business, and with the initiations for exports development.

SMEs can play a pivotal role in Sri Lanka's exports sector for the growth of the nation on a very large scale. SMEs currently account for 80-90 percent of the total number of enterprises in Sri Lanka. The European Union (EU) is an economic and political union of 27 member states; The EU has developed a single market through standardisation of laws which applies in all member states including the abolition of passport controls within the union.

Consequently, it ensures the free movement of people, goods, services and capital and maintains common policies on agriculture, fisheries and regional development.

With a population of over 500 million highly educated people with high spending capacity, it has attracted many exporters from various parts of the world.

However, many Sri Lankan exporters do not comprehensively understand how to find markets, attract buyers, market policies, environmental standards and other statutory requirements of the EU.

This complex market was always a challenge to our exporters and this reason has seen exporters limiting their exports to a market with immense opportunities, which could be utilised if properly understood and trained.

The Centre for the Promotion of Imports from Developing Countries (CBI) of the Netherlands contributes to sustainable economic development in developing countries through the expansion of exports from these countries.

CBI, the expert in export development and export promotion from developing countries has a solid network of international stakeholders. Their contribution consists of strengthening of competitive capacity of SME exporters focusing primarily on European markets.

The core focus areas are counselling, advice and knowledge management. With this mindset, CBI has joined forces with FCCISL and its partner chambers to form a strategic alliance to offer training for exporters in Sri Lanka which is supported and assisted by the Export Development Board (EDB) of Sri Lanka.