Tag: business

June 3, 2011 (AFP) – Sri Lanka deployed heavily-armed troops around the country’s main free-trade zone on Friday as tension mounted ahead of the weekend funeral of a factory worker shot dead by police, officials said. Soldiers were placed in the Katunayake zone, just next to the country’s only international airport where a range of […]

June 02, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s central bank which has restored a historic building in Colombo city’s old quarter which features colonial era architecture will begin work on a second building that it has bought, a top official said. The central bank officially opened ‘Lloyds Building’ in Sir Baron Jayetilleke Mawatha in Colombo’s Fort […]

June 02, 2011 (LBO) – A Sri Lankan worker who was shot while protesting a state plan to deduct more money from private sector worker salaries to build a new state-controlled pension fund has died as the country’s police chief stepped down. The proposed plan would see deductions going up further. Sri Lanka’s state workers […]

June 01, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s first quarter 2011 state revenues rose 19. 5 percent from a year earlier to 218.4 billion rupees ahead of annual projections of 17. 8 percent with people paying 24.3 percent more taxes , but the revenue deficit was wide. Current expenses pulled ahead at a 9. 9 percent […]

June 1, 2011 (AFP) – Two senior Sri Lankan police officers have been arrested over live rounds fired at protests against a pension bill at which 150 people were injured in violent clashes. Police spokesman Prishantha Jayakody said the two inspectors were held over their conduct at Monday’s protest in Katunayake, a town near the […]

June 01, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Export Processing Zone next to the Katunayake international airport is to be reopened Thursday following violent protests by workers against a new government pension bill they opposed. The Board of Investment said it requests all employees attached to the enterprises in the zone, north of Colombo, to report […]

May 31, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s exports surged 54 percent in March to 1,057 million dollars, topping a billion dollars for the first time helped by a steep increase in industrial goods as well as rising commodity prices, official data showed. Investment goods imports rose 95 percent to 163 million US dollars and consumer […]

May 31, 2011 (LBO) – Consumer prices in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo rose 8. 8 percent in May 2011 from a year earlier, decelerating from a high of 9.8 percent in April, the government’s statistics office data showed. The country’s interbank money markets are flushed with excess liquidity. But in the month of May the […]

May 30, 2011 (LBO) – International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private sector financing arm, said it could double investments in Sri Lanka to nearly 70 million dollars a year after a 30-year war ended in the country. “We are ready to step up our investment in the post conflict era,” Pavol Wajda, program coordinator […]

May 30, 2011 (LBO) – International Finance Corporation, World Bank’s private sector arm, Dialog Axiata and IBM Corporation is seeing growing use of a web based business training platform backed by mobile delivery in Sri Lanka, officials said. IFC’s business toolkit developed by IBM has been adapted to Sri Lanka since 2008 targeting small and […]

May 30, 2011 (LBO) – A proposed controversial ‘pension’ bill to strengthen state control over forced retirement savings of private sector workers will not apply to export industrial zones, the government said as protesters and police were injured in clashes. Sri Lanka has had three armed uprisings in the past four decades where tens of […]

May 29, 2011 (LBO) – Protests against a controversial attempt by the state to grab long term control of private sector workers’ retirement funds and deduct more money from their salaries are rising. The Sunday Times newspaper said more than 10,000 workers from Sri Lanka’s export processing zones took part in protests last week. Workers […]