Ceylon Chamber sets up ‘National Agenda Committees’

Tuesday, 26 January 2016 00:57 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, in a pioneering move for a Sri Lankan business grouping, is launching a set of premier thought-leadership groups to represent the country’s foremost insights on key strategic economic themes. The ‘National Agenda Committees’ - or NACs - will be a set of multi-stakeholder groups functioning under the CCC, to challenge conventional thinking, develop new insights, and put forward innovative solutions for key national economic challenges.

Speaking on the CCC’s thinking behind this, Chairman Samantha Ranatunga noted, “The Sri Lankan economy is at an important inflection point and the private sector has an important role to play in influencing the future trajectory. Some key challenges and bottlenecks need to be tackled and we need to develop cutting-edge thinking. What better way to do this than by bringing the best minds together to develop new ideas and solutions?”.

The first set of five NACs are being launched this month and they are the ‘National Agenda Committee on Investment Climate’, ‘National Agenda Committee on Infrastructure’, ‘National Agenda Committee on Finance and Capital’, ‘National Agenda Committee on Logistics and Transport’, and ‘National Agenda Committee on the Innovation Eco-system’.

Chief Economist of the CCC and curator of the NACs, Anushka Wijesinha, observed that, “The NACs will start as communities of interest, and move to become communities of purpose and communities of action. The members for each NAC are being carefully selected to represent the most relevant, current and knowledgeable individuals from business, government, academia, and civil society.”