BOI woos Singaporeans to invest in Sri Lanka

Singapore is set to become the biggest foreign investor in Sri Lanka over the next few years as the country moves to end a decades-long ethnic war.







Singapore is set to become the biggest foreign investor in Sri Lanka over the next few years as the country moves to end a decades-long ethnic war. A shopping mall, hotel and residential complex called Havelock City planned by Shin Kwan Group at a cost of 0 million will kick off a new round of investment by Singapore companies this year.

"Singapore is already the third-biggest foreign investor in the country in terms of cumulative investment," Saliya Wickramasuriya, the director general of the Board of Investment, the country's investment promotion body, told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview.

In the last decade, millionaire S.

P. Tao, the chief of the Shin Kwan Group, built the 36-storey World Trade Center towers spending 0 million, and Singapore's Prima Ltd bought a flour mill at a cost of million.

Foreign investment into Sri Lanka was just 1 million last year and is expected to improve slightly to 0 million this year, Wickramasuriya said.

The U.K. and Australia hav