Saturday Nov 07, 2026
Saturday Nov 07, 2026
Saturday, 7 November 2026 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Finance Deputy Minister
Dr. Anil Jayantha Fernando
Finance Deputy Minister Dr. Anil Jayantha Fernando told Parliament that the Government will reapply for trade concessions under the European Union’s Generalised Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+) to retain preferential access to the bloc’s market beyond 2027.
GSP+ is the EU’s most generous tariff arrangement for developing countries, cutting duties to zero on around two thirds of product lines in return for binding commitments to 27 international conventions covering human rights, labour standards, environmental protection and good governance.
Answering Opposition MP Ravi Karunanayake in Parliament on Thursday, Dr. Fernando said the EU’s renewed GSP framework takes effect on 1 January, 2027 and remains in operation until 31 December, 2036.
Beneficiaries of the current scheme must submit fresh applications under the new framework, though they may continue on existing terms during a transition period running to the end of 2028. Sri Lanka will file within the window from 1 January, 2027 to 31 December, 2028 and is working to meet the conditions needed to keep GSP+ status, Dr. Fernando said.
The concessions matter most to apparel, the country’s largest export earner, which competes in the EU against suppliers paying standard tariffs. The previous GSP+ arrangement ran to the end of 2023 and was extended pending the revision now in force from January.
The Joint Apparel Associations Forum (JAAF) recently warned that the Government’s proposed anti-terror Bill is ‘very likely to be a roadblock’ to that (GSP+) application.
Apparel earns about $ 5 billion a year and more than 40% of merchandise exports, and the EU absorbs a little over 30% of the total, including $ 705 million in the first half of 2026, a period in which those shipments fell 8% while EU imports of apparel from China rose 5% and from Vietnam 9%.
JAAF does not argue against a counter-terrorism law. However, it points out that a Bill this broad, with so little judicial oversight, puts at risk the trade access that sustains hundreds of thousands of livelihoods, because GSP+ is conditional on compliance with 27 international conventions and the EU will weigh the replacement law when Sri Lanka reapplies for the scheme’s next cycle in 2027.
The industry body argues that a failed application would leave the country without its largest trade preference program, and that amending the Bill now is cheap where fixing it afterwards will not be.
