Strategic growth and development of the Sri Lanka export sector depends heavily on the availability and ease of access to trade intelligence and information. Small & Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) and other sectors at large will benefit immensely from concerted, coordinated and well-designed promotional campaigns to propel Sri Lankan products to regional and international markets.
In the light of this gap in the availability of trade information & intelligence for Sri Lankan exporters, ‘Trade Information & Promotion’ (TIP) has been identified as a vital Trade Support Function in the National Export Strategy (NES).
Trade information may be statistical data, market intelligence, regulatory procedures, standards and norms, or processes that are required to provide important analysis to take strategic decisions for international trade. This information refers to a set of activities that can broadly be classified in three categories – collection or gathering of information, analysis of such gathered information and efficient dissemination of the information.
The lead organization for dissemination of trade information and promoting international trade is the Sri Lanka Export Development Board (EDB), with support from institutions such as the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) and Sri Lanka Customs (SLC), which provide raw and analysed data and information. From a private sector perspective, industry bodies such as the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC), National Chamber of Exporters of Sri Lanka (NCE) and Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Sri Lanka (FCCISL), among others, provide TIP services.
TIP is vital to develop export competitiveness across Sri Lanka. Both the availability and quality of TIP details are weak. With that in mind, public and multisectoral private stakeholders crafted the following industry vision to bring Sri Lanka on a par with global standards for trade promotion activities and dissemination of trade information:
“Enabling exporters to make strategic market decisions to promote Sri Lanka’s trade”
For the latest on trade information visit (https://www.srilankabusiness.com/edb/trade-information.html)
