Industries call for transport sector reforms

By Cassandra Mascarenhas
The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport Sri Lanka (CILT) concluded their annual International Conference yesterday, held at the Ceylon Continental, which explored the theme ‘Success of Delivery,’ together with a diverse panel of local and international speakers covering a broad range of industries who deliberated on success stories from Sri Lanka and overseas.

CILT Sri Lanka also launched its official website at the event, which drew a large crowd of professionals from the industry. A recurring theme discussed at the event was professionalism in supply chain management, an underlying theme that CILT Sri Lanka has been following over the past couple of years, and was also the subject of the presentation delivered by the CILT International President Alan Waller.
Chief Guest at the event Minister of International Monetary Cooperation Dr. Sarath Amunugama called for the cooperation of the logistics and transport sector in order to reform and improve the transportation sector of the country.
“The situation in the country today is that there is large scale investment, employment figures are encouraging and many macroeconomic problems we had are being addressed seriously. Sri Lanka’s management of her economy is getting quite a lot of praise. But that brings me to a key question, that of sustainability, which is the main problem that we face now and we must take all the steps necessary to grow and accelerate,” he said.
“In this case, logistics and transport becomes absolutely crucial – we need to reform and improve the transportation sector of our country and we look forward to even greater cooperation and achievement from you in the future.”
Today it has been recognised that Asia is the engine of growth when traditional developed economies are facing a crisis, the Minister stated, but he felt that the West would come out of this crisis. “It has caused a reassessment of their policies but they are too big to fail, so while we think of the growth trajectory in Asia, we have to realise that we are closely integrated with the global market,” he cautioned.
“The question of logistics and transport is crucial not only for internal development but also for those growth sectors that have manifested in our country. The IMF has given us a $ 2.6 billion bailout programme, whereas we get nearly five billion in foreign remittances from 1.6 million people living abroad all going to the underprivileged people in the country, which is why I think we are emerging from poverty and I think that we should increase our workers abroad to three million in order to deal with the many issues we face within the country now.”
“One problem we have had is that we have not communicated to people like you, who are already in the business, of all these plans and all of you should also be partners in all this, the State alone can’t do all this. The CTB has to be reformed, be given a few good kicks. We have invested money in the CTB every year yet it still can’t run as a profitable enterprise. I think public transport must be looked into very seriously and we have to turn it around.”
The Minister urged the industry to take a hard look at the internal and external transportation system, which is something we cannot avoid, and Sri Lanka too is making a huge investment in this sector with projects such as the Colombo Port Expansion which is one of the biggest PPP projects in the whole of Asia.
He added that it would be a big challenge because Sri Lanka was not the only country wanting to do this. He pointed out that one would say that we had entered rather late as other countries had got going some time back. With the growth of Asian economies, the development of this sector has become the most crucial one.
“Are we actually being effective in delivering the growth what the society is expecting of us? Both from the public and private sectors, are we efficient? Is it sustainable, the technology and processes that we are using – are they creating an adverse impact on the environment and is it a burden on society?” questioned CILT Sri Lanka Chairman Professor Amal Kumarage in his address.
He went on to say that Sri Lanka needs to meet the challenges of the future with the current development taking place by repositioning existing transportation networks and implementing processes and technology to meet the growing demands of the economy.
“These are new challenges that must be understood in the complexities they present and they must be professionally managed. It needs careful and well planned networks.
The multimodal network we have inherited may not serve us that effectively anymore. The time is here for new logistic centres, distribution centres and new technology and these should be well planned and well structured as Sri Lanka’s success will depend on this,” the CILT Chairman emphasised.
He added that the new expressway system should be used as a catalyst and the new basis for the transportation system for the country and that new nodes must come up outside of Colombo and other secondary nodes should become equally important, especially ensuring connectivity in the north and east.
The need is most obvious to modernise and optimise our current processes, he pointed out and called for the use of assertive and new methods and a new breed of professionals to overcome the complex challenges that the logistics and supply chain poses today.
“Today the greatest need is for professionals in the transport and logistics industry. The maritime and aviation hubs must be integrated to the entire country but this is not a task that the Government should attempt on its own, the private sector should be involved from the beginning, professional institutes have a lot to contribute in this regard as well.”
- Pix by Upul
Abayasekara