‘Championing Value Addition in Agri Exports’

Wednesday, 15 July 2015 00:38 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

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Sri Lanka Economic Summit 2015’s second day sessions to be held on 5 August will kick-start with the topic of ‘Championing Value Addition in Agri Exports,’ which will discuss ways and means of championing value addition.

The Keynote Speaker of this session will be Myong Keun Eor, Honorary Senior Fellow of the Korea Rural Economic Institute. Myong-Keun Eor earlier has served as the Adviser of the Trade Negotiating Civil Committee of Korea, Coordinator of Korea Pacific Economic Cooperation Council and Special Member of the Agriculture and Rural Development, etc. He has also extensively engaged in training agriculture officers of several countries including Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Cambodia through KOICA.

His keynote speech will be followed with a panel discussion with the participation of experts from a cross section of the agri sector. The panellists includes Annes Junaid, Managing Director of CBL Natural Foods, Irfan Thassim, Managing Director of Oceanpick Ltd., and Buddhi Marambe; Professor of the Department of Crop Science, Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Peradeniya. Rizvi Zaheed, Managing Director, Hayleys Agriculture Holdings Ltd., will moderate the session.

Sri Lanka’s export growth is seriously hampered owing to the lack of diversification of our export basket and export markets. The country’s export market is purely concentrated in Western economies, while tea and apparel continue to dominate with a 60% export income share. This leaves our export sector vulnerable to various external shocks.

It is in this backdrop, the Sri Lanka Economic Summit, the annually held forum is discussing the title of ‘Towards Exports of USD 50 billion’.

The two-day event touches eight different topics pertaining to exports in separate sessions and is expected to be taken part by nearly 450 participants. To register to take part in this annual event, please call on 5588877 or 5588852.