WISTA Sri Lanka holds panel discussion on ‘National Maritime Policy and way forward’

Women’s International Shipping and Trading Association (WISTA) – Sri Lanka arranged a panel discussion on ‘National Maritime Policy & way forward’ following their Annual General Meeting held at the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce on 13 July. The aim of the discussion was to discuss the views of the members to make submission to the Ministry of Ports and Shipping in formulation of a maritime policy to support the current business model. 

Panellists (from left): Catriona Jayasundera, Tania Polonnowita Wettimuny, Anoma Ranasinghe, Gayani De Alwis and Aparna Thilakaratne

The panel featured Tania Polonnowita Wettimuny – Immediate Chairperson of Sri Lanka Logistics and Freight Forwarders Association, Gayani De Alwis – Vice Chairperson CILT, Catriona Jayasundera, General Manager – Marketing and Commercial and Aparna Thilakaratne – Chief Law Officer-Sri Lanka Ports Authority. The discussion was moderated by Anoma Ranasinghe – Chairperson – Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers (UK) – Sri Lanka Branch.

The four panellists focused on areas of port and terminal outlook, providing of ancillary services, multimodal transport for sustainable development, role of supply chain for a dynamic maritime policy and legal constraints hindering an effective policy.

All panellists stressed the importance of the need to revise the shipping policy and have a sustainable policy in place. Having a state of the art infra structure to meet the demand of port users, requirement of right facilities for value additions and ancillary services, having a public/private partnership business model; overcoming the challenges faced by multimodal transport operators to be competitive, terminalisation of supply chain to optimise terminal capacity and to increase throughput, having quality human capital and focus more on training and skills development , introducing maritime and logistics in to school curricula and simplification of current legislation, policy and procedure, for ease of business. 

The Women’s International Shipping and Trading Association (WISTA) – Sri Lanka, was launched on 3 July 2014 in Sri Lanka. WISTA is an international networking organisation for women at management level in maritime, transportation, business and related trades and, is acknowledged as a professional and highly reputable shipping organisation. WISTA has over 18,000 members in 33 countries. Swabha Wickramasinghe was elected as the new President of WISTA Sri Lanka.