Need to build Strong Srilankan Brands..................

Sri Lanka is a country which has a unique location, when you consider its geographical location on the world map. although its tiny and almost invisible it has a lot to offerto the world. It has a very long History which is rich in culture and heritage.

So if not for thius ruthless civil war we could have been in par with the other nations long ago. We were just to become a NIC (new industrialised Country), in in early 1990's when we missed a great opportunity due to lack of clear policies from the government.

Has our country got its Branding when comparing with the rest of the world? to compete with other international strong brands. The answer is a definite NO. Then whats the reason for it? our people produced products only cater it to the local market where as countries like Japan , and South Korea produced to staright away to compete with the rest of the world. We should have done the same long years back, then we could have been much stronger now. Still it isn't too late to build strong Sri Lankan brands. We should also look at the Quality of the products produced in the country when produced to the world, not only to the local community. That's develop core competancies. Take brands such as SONY, TOYOYA where it has a strong brand image across the borders.

Lets make Sri Lanka live up to it's potential

Look at any industry, Sri Lanka could do better to compete well with the other nations in the world. Look at the tourism Industry, it has a far more greater potential than at present. We could develop to attract more and more niche markets like Adventure tourism, Eco-Tourism and etc.See the Potential of the sea food industry, being an island and the best breathing grounds for fish and sea food like Prawns, Cuttle fish, Lobsters, Tuna, Crabs anf fish comes from the North & East Seas off where the LTTE are dominating at present.

When we visited the one of the leading Sea food Processing factories in Chilaw, Indiwary Aqua Products Ltd. - Mr.Milroy Fernando,CEO/MD said it has the potential to do better and make the highest forex earner to the country if its launched in the correct way.

This country could offer more and more entrepreneurs, to take up the risk and start business ventures with either private or public enterprises. if it needs a larger investment you could form joint venture with foreign investor where one could get the technical know how as well as capital .
Sri Lanka should create more employment opportunities if it need to create thousands of jobs for the graduates to be employed. Therefore its the governments duty to create a sound economic environment for these people to invest in many projects.

We could look at any industry, that we could do to earn more income to the country, by doing so we could bring down the gap of the deficit created by the Balance of payment due to high cost of importing against lower income from the export earnings. to this need we need to think positively and look at the consumption patterns and the trends in the global market and develop strategies to compete with other nations. if one ask how Japan and singapore did well having no nutural resources , they lookedtowards the future (far sighted) and they developed products catering to the whole world and not only to the consumers in that perticular country.
so it is the duty of the elected government to assist the SME sectors to explore new avanues to market their products . We need to bring down the cost of electricity in the country by implementing new power projects throughout the country as planned. Infarstructure facilities like, having a good transport sector both Rail and road networks, highly developed ports and airport facilities could mean a lot in building competitive advantage over other competing countries.

So let us make Sri Lanka work and be a model to other countries as earlier. Private sector and government sector have to work as partners in this endavour rather than seeing each others as competitors.