Biz Briefs

Sri Lanka Tourism to launch promotion in China

In the backdrop of overall number of tourist arrivals from China reaching 94,585 up to June, a growth of 81.1%, Sri Lanka Tourism will aggressively promote Sri Lanka in the Chinese market by launching the multimillion dollar Disney epic ‘Monkey Kingdom’ in Shanghai with SriLankan Airlines, where 20 children will be given a free ticket to visit Polonnaruwa where ‘Monkey Kingdom’ was filmed.

The overall program will be a partnership with the Shanghai Tourism Promotion Bureau and will include an educational drive on responsible environment management and importance of bio-diversity.

ComBank among Top 1,000

The Commercial Bank of Ceylon has once again been ranked among the Top 1,000 Banks of the World, in the rankings published annually by The Banker magazine of the UK, becoming the only Sri Lankan bank to achieve this feat five years in a row.

The ranking is based on the Bank’s key performance indicators for FY 2014. Commercial Bank has moved up 39 places in the 2015 rankings. The Top 1,000 Banks of the World are ranked on the basis of Tier I capital, assets, capital assets ratio, pre-tax profits, return on capital, return on assets, BIS (Basel) Capital ratio, NPL to total loans, loans to assets ratio, risk weighted assets (RWA) to total assets (TA) ratio and cost income ratio.

New SriLankan Codeshare

A new codeshare agreement between SriLankan Airlines, airberlin, the second largest airline in Germany, and its subsidiary NIKI was signed recently, paving the way for increased tourism potential between Sri Lanka, Germany and Austria.

The three airlines are set to offer daily codeshare flights between Berlin, Vienna and Sri Lanka via Abu Dhabi.

airberlin and NIKI will apply their flight numbers to SriLankan Airlines’ daily flights between Abu Dhabi and Colombo, while SriLankan Airlines’ customers can now travel on airberlin and NIKI flights to Berlin-Tegel and Vienna via Abu Dhabi, as a result of the codeshare agreement.

SriLankan Airlines also codeshares to Munich in Germany with Etihad Airways.

People’s Bank to strengthen SMEs

The SME Development Unit of the People’s Bank organised two educational seminars under its

Viyawasayaka Udanaya (Entrepreneurial Glory) series recently, to strengthen the vital SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) sector .

Seminars were conducted at Thalawatugoda and Mawanella which were attended by a large number of entrepreneurs. The goal of the People’s Bank is to increase awareness of customers and non-customers, on entrepreneurship, business planning, banking, accounting, financial management, business strategies and tax-related issues and thereby increase the financial literacy levels of the business community.