Oct 11, 2010 (LBO) – Sri Lanka is offering free land and tax breaks for top ranked foreign universities to start branches in the island with the end of a state monopoly in awarding degrees, the island’s higher education minister said. “We are planning to bring higher education institutions ranked among the top 1,000 in the world to Sri Lanka,” S B Dissanayake told LBO.
“At the moment we are having discussions with 23 institutions and 15 of them are very much positive.”
The government will give tax holidays under the Board of Investment law and free land provided there is a 20 percent intake of students free and the government gets a stake in the venture, he said.
Others can either lease or buy land and those that set up collages outside the capital Colombo like in northern Jaffna, which is recovering from a war, and Galle and Kandy, can get more generous tax holidays.
Australia™s Monash, China’s Beijing State University, India’s Bangalore-based Manipal Medical College and the London School of Fashion are among the institutions that are having talks, he said.
“If we consider India™s Bangalore based Manipal Medical College, they are annually receiving more than 7,000 applications to enter the Medical Colle