Offshore Opportunity

May 14, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Hemas group and Colombo Dockyard have teamed up with Singapore’s Toll Offshore Petroleum Services to bid for Cairn India’s contract for offshore oil field support services, officials said. “Hemas Holdings, Colombo Dockyard and Toll Offshore Petroleum Services have jointly placed a bid for the offshore supply base for […]

Sri Lanka to re-assess foreign investment strategy

May 13, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s investment promotion agency will re-assess its strategy following the end of a long drawn out separatist war with plans for a stronger focus to attract investments from the United States and Europe, officials said. The Board of Investment of Sri Lanka now has a five-year corporate plan. But […]

India pushing free trade deal with Sri Lanka: report

May 13, 2010 (LBO) – India’s is keen to push head with a trade and services liberalization deal with Sri Lanka which was scuttled by protectionist forces in the island on the brink of signing, a media report said. There is already an Indo-Lanka Free Trade Arrangement which had liberalized a range of traded goods […]

‘s ex-army chief in court on new charge

May 12, 2010 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s ex-army chief and defeated presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka was for the first time hauled before a civilian court Wednesday and accused of inciting violence. Fonseka, who is in military custody and faces separate court martial charges of dabbling in politics while in uniform and corrupt procurements, was brought […]

Sri Lanka sees US$500mn coming in to leisure

May 12, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s state investment promotion agency is processing almost 500 million dollars of new deals mainly into leisure and is planning two investments zones in the former war-torn north of the island, officials said. Kulasekara said the end of the war had opened up two-thirds of the country’s beach areas […]

‘s big spenders on the backfoot after trillion dollar rescue

BRUSSELS, May 10, 2010 (AFP) – Europe and the IMF gave a major boost to world markets Monday with a trillion-dollar war chest to ease fears of a new recession, but governments faced pressure to clean up their fiscal houses. Some 440 billion euros would come from eurozone nations and 60 billion euros from the […]

Sri Lanka pension fund earns real returns

May 10, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s main pension fund of private citizens earned a large real return as the Central Bank brought inflation down in 2009, though the national debt expanded as the state could not inflate away debt and impoverish pensioners. In the 2009 annual report the Central Bank said the government should […]

Sri Lanka exports up on commodity boom; imports recover

May 10, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s exports grew 20 percent 629 million US dollars in February 2010 on the back of booming agricultural commodities while apparel, the country’s main industrial export, contracted 9.7 percent to 248.6, official data showed. The Central Bank said apparel exports however had improved from January. Earnings from tea grew […]

‘s Baltic states

RIGA, May 9, 2010 (AFP) – Seen from the eastern rim of the European Union, the looming austerity drive in crisis-afflicted Greece reads like old news. For almost two years, the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have brought in repeated draconian anti-crisis measures, slashing public spending and hiking taxes to try to dig […]

Sri Lanka will use presidential powers to fix economy: minister

May 09, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s president Mahinda Rajapaksa who crushed a 30-year separatist war in the island and won landslide election last month will use his extensive executive powers to fix the economy, a powerful minister said. “The president used his executive powers in the last three years to finish the war,” Basil […]

Sri Lanka partly shielded from Greek crisis by IMF, donor loans: S&P

May 08, 2010 (LBO) – A fiscal and monetary prudence program backed by the International Monetary Fund and donor loans will partly shield Sri Lanka from the fallout of a European credit confidence crisis, a rating agency has said. Sri Lanka hit a balance of payments crisis in late 2008 and some foreign lenders refused […]

Sri Lanka calls on West to crack down on Tiger funding

May 7, 2010 (AFP) – Sri Lanka’s prime minister on Friday urged Western nations to crack down on Tamils using their soil to revive the Tamil Tiger separatist movement that was crushed last year. Premier D. M. Jayaratne said some of the 1.5 million ethnic Tamils living abroad were planning to form a movement to […]

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