Tuesday Jul 14, 2026
Tuesday Jul 14, 2026
Monday, 13 July 2026 00:20 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
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CIMC Events Founder, Shippers’ Academy Colombo CEO and Shippers’ Academy International Founder Rohan Masakorala
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The 8th edition of the Colombo International Maritime and Logistics Conference (CIMC 2026) will convene from 9 to 11 September at the oceanfront Radisson Blu Hotel Galadari Colombo.
Operating under the strategic theme "Building a world around us," this premier three-day summit arrives at a critical juncture as global supply chains face unprecedented volatility, strict decarbonisation mandates, and geopolitical shifts from the Gulf to major maritime choke points. The event is organised by CIMC Events and Shippers’ Academy Colombo/International.
Backed by leading chambers including AMCHAM Sri Lanka, the European Chamber of Commerce, and the German Chamber (AHK), the conference serves Sri Lanka as the ultimate gateway for international investors and global businesses to access South Asia’s rapidly evolving maritime and logistics landscape with growing trade volumes.
The conference will be launched with international high officials from the United States of America, India and many other countries. This high-level policy focus will be paired with the official release of the South Asia Container Report by Maritime Gateway, providing critical trade projection data up to 2035. The event immediately transitions into a deep dive on macroeconomic regional shifts, highlighting multilateral reform roadmaps driven by data from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), alongside a strategic evaluation of the "Indian Growth Story 2047" to foster regional collaboration rather than competition in intra-Asia trade.
A primary objective of CIMC 2026 is driving commercial modernisation and structural evolution across regional ports, including Colombo, Hambantota, and Trincomalee. High-impact sessions will expose lucrative foreign direct investment (FDI) opportunities in multiple verticals, spatial planning for trillion-dollar global free ports, and green bunkering infrastructure designed to meet IMO decarbonisation targets through alternative ship fuels. Industry experts will in parallel tackle modern tech-driven logistics markets, examining how global transportation giants utilise backward integration, electronic bills of lading, and digital supply chain finance to optimise global cash flows and speed-to-market delivery.
The conference will break away from traditional transhipment models by exploring unconventional supply chain frontiers, such as multimodal air-sea connectivity and rapid entry pathways into Africa's booming $ 447 billion logistics market. Delegates will gain a comprehensive view of operational risks through dedicated sessions on artificial intelligence workflow automation and maritime cyber security threats. Culminating in a critical, multi-party-political fireside chat, the summit will debate how to rewrite Sri Lanka's stagnant 1979 maritime framework to aggressively lift the sector's national GDP contribution from under 2.5% to a target of 10%, offering investors a transparent look at the region's future economic trajectory.
