After The Pandemic: The Way Ahead

　　
Mr. Merrick Gooneratne, the President of the Sri Lanka–Japan Business Council,
Mr. TANAKA Fusato, Chief Representative, JICA, Sri Lanka Office,
Mr. ITONAGA Masatomo, Resident Representative of JETRO Colombo,
Distinguished Members of the Sri Lanka–Japan Business Council,

Ladies and Gentlemen,
 
Good Afternoon.

It is my great honor to participate in this webinar “After The Pandemic: The Way Ahead” and I would like to commend Mr. Merrick Gooneratne, the President of the Sri Lanka–Japan Business Council and his team for organizing this event in the midst of unprecedented challenges posed by COVID-19. I appreciate the kind invitation and it is my great pleasure to speak a few words at this august event.

The Sri Lanka–Japan Business Council was established in 1979 by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce. Since its inception, the Council has been contributing to  promoting trade, investment and tourism between Sri Lanka and Japan for more than four decades. I am therefore confident that under the leadership of Mr. Gooneratne, the SLJBC will make valuable contributions to further strengthening business relations between our two countries in the post COVID-19 economic recovery.
 
 I should say that the COVID 19 pandemic is far from over, although vaccination campaigns gathering pace in many countries including Sri Lanka gives us hope for the end of the pandemic. Therefore, it is very timely to think about what we should do to overcome multi-faceted negative impacts caused by COVID 19.  In this sense, this webinar’s topic "After the Pandemic: The Way Ahead” is apt and should be of great interest to all of us.

The coronavirus infiltrated lives of all, from the richest to the poorest, industrialists and business tycoons to small entrepreneurs and to daily wage earners. Economic activities came to a grinding halt and education institutions were shut down to protect future generations from the pandemic. We wear face masks, use hand sanitizers and keep social distancing whenever we meet. As we have a webinar today, we have learned to meet virtually or online or remotely by using various applications many of us were not very familiar with one year ago. Recently we are often talking about “new normal”.

The COVID-19 has had a serious negative impact on the global economy. Both Sri Lanka and Japan, like other countries in the world, are struggling with the challenge of resuming and rebuilding economic activities while controlling and, hopefully containing the spread of the virus. Although we need to continue to be vigilant to the invisible virus in our daily life, we have to bring back economic activities to the pre-pandemic level and to restore our way of life, including reopening educational institutions, keeping in mind many lessons from our pandemic experiences and in some cases, adjusting ourselves to “new normal”.

As I said earlier, the challenges we face are multi-faceted. Today I limit myself to briefly discussing trade, tourism and foreign investment, which continue to be very important for Sri Lanka’s economic recovery and business relations between Japan and Sri Lanka in the post COVID-19 era.

As business people like yourselves know much better, restoring and increasing exports is vital not only for maintaining and enhancing the Sri Lankan economy and employment and for alleviating its external debt burden. While restoring the traditional export of apparel and agricultural products is urgent for Sri Lanka, diversifying export products in response to “new normal” situation will provide new business opportunities. In the wake of COVID-19, “work from home”’ or “remote work” are becoming a new professional norm in Japan and some say that this new work style will be here to stay even after the pandemic. This new trend has made a significant impact on domestic demand and imports in Japan, since it requires electronic devices for internet connections. In fact, the import of laptop computers and routing devices has contributed significantly to the upturn in Japan's import value in the April-June 2020 period. My humble view is that under these circumstances there are good opportunities for Sri Lanka to export electronic devices and software to Japan as well as to the world. I strongly believe that Sri Lanka has a significant potential to increase its export to Japan by diversifying its export products in response to the novel needs in a post-COVID-19 era.  

In this context, since trade is a two-way street, I would like to call the attention of the audience to the fact that Sri Lankan Government’s ongoing import restriction, particularly on automobiles, impacts the export from Japan to Sri Lanka. While we understand the need for management of foreign currency outflow, this measure has been seriously influencing the business operation of some Japanese companies in Sri Lanka.

Having the tourism industry back to normal is another challenge to Sri Lanka.  The Government of Sri Lanka is taking various measures to welcome foreign tourists under the current circumstances, including creation of bio bubbles, designation of tier 1 and 2 hotels for tourists and special PCR test arrangement for tourists. In addition, the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority has put forward a proposal to vaccinate stakeholders in the tourism industry. I strongly hope that all of these measures will contribute to the recovery of tourism industry in Sri Lanka. Japan has been actively promoting in-bound tourism and the tourism industry of Japan has also suffered a great deal from the severe restrictions of people’s movement under the pandemic. I hope that Japan and Sri Lanka can share the ideas and experiences for restoring tourism in the post-COVID-19 era. Of course, I am always ready to support Sri Lanka in promoting the beautiful country to Japanese tourists who are eagerly awaiting the day of resuming travel abroad.

Even prior to the pandemic, H.E. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa emphasized the central importance of attracting foreign investment to Sri Lanka. This policy will continue to be of vital importance to the Sri Lankan economy in the post COVID-19 era. In many countries, including Japan, the need to establish a sustainable and reliable supply system by diversifying production bases, especially in Asia, is keenly recognized in order to eliminate the risk of supply disruption of critical goods in the event of an unexpected crisis. While I believe that Sri Lanka is in a good position to benefit from this post COVID-19 trend, it is important for Sri Lanka to enhance the investment climate, including the consistency and coherence of the Government policy, in order to gain a competitive advantage of Sri Lanka over Southeast Asian counterparts, for example, in attracting FDI. For instance, I have heard requests from Japanese investors for a one-stop shop to complete various procedures related to investment. We hope that further improvement of the investment environment in Sri Lanka will make Sri Lanka a promising candidate as a new production base for many Japanese companies.

With many lessons learnt from this pandemic, Japan and Sri Lanka should collaborate to convert challenges posed by the pandemic into opportunities.  Japan will continue to deepen our dialogue and cooperation with Sri Lanka to promote trade and investment between the two countries and to provide development assistance in response to the genuine needs of the Sri Lankan people.

Let me conclude my opening remarks by wishing for a fruitful and thought-provoking discussion this afternoon.
 
Thank you very much for your kind attention.