Bid To Make SL Power House Of South Asia: Athukorala
Let’s work together to make Sri Lanka the power house of South Asia,” said Dr Rohantha Athukorala, Chairman of Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, at the Expo 2015 in Milan, Italy.
Citing the country pavilions of Khazakhaztan, Angola, Nepal and Vietnam, which indicate the aggressiveness and appetite the countries demonstrate to get a global share on trade and tourism, Athukorala said that we had a lot of catching up to do. “When I visited the Malaysian and Thailand country pavilions, we see how strong they are on digital space driving on line connectivity which is where the global traveller behavior is moving towards and Sri Lanka needs to align with speed. I am glad as a team Sri Lanka took the first step to be present at Expo 2015,” said Athukorala, who architectured the Nation brand building strategy at Expo 2015 for Sri Lanka.
Athukorala in a very objective statement said, “I must commend the leadership of Prime Minister for securing this space at gratis from the government of Italy and the two ministers who gave us timely direction namely, the Minister of Tourism Navin Dissanayake and the Minister for Industry and Commerce Rishad Bathuideen for helping us stage this event in just five weeks with necessary approvals from the cabinet of ministers.
“Having visited the key competitive country pavilions at Expo 2015, my take is that it’s time that Sri Lanka focuses from the challenges internally to the macro global trends in the world market and strategize how we can capture them,” said Athukorala.
At present Sri Lanka is valued at 61 billion dollars as per Brand Finance( UK) and it is poised to cross eighty billion dollars plus in the next two years given that the drag on this value in the past was on the pivotal area of ‘Governance’. This has now been corrected post the new government coming to play on January 8, 2015, say the experts.
“Research reveals that countries with strong brand value tend to attract top quality investments, exports become stronger whilst it becomes an attractive tourist destination for top dollar global traveller,” said Athukorala.
