Hon. Dr. Bandula Gunawardena, Minister of Trade, had a virtual meeting with all the Commercial Officers serving in Sri Lank Missions Abroad on 14^th December 2021 to discuss regarding the promotion of Sri Lanka’s Trade, Tourism and Investment in the respective host and accredited countries.

During the meeting, the Minister emphasized importance of negotiate for the Credit line facilities on imports or export credit scheme from host countries, to facilitate the government to recover from this economic condition. Further the discussion focused on having a Free Trade Agreement or Preferential Trade Agreement with the host country during the year 2022.

Also, the Hon. Ministers gave specific directives to Commercial Officials on promotional and other activities which they are planned to do on 2022.

At the end, Hon. Ministers also requested, the Commercial officers need to coordinate with the Ministry of Trade when they are planning programmes to promote Sri Lanka’s trade, investment and tourism in future.

Hon. Dr. Bandula Gunawardena, Minister of Trade, along with Hon. Prasanna Ranathunga, Minister of Tourism, had a virtual meeting with all the Commercial Officers serving in Sri Lank Missions Abroad on 26^th October 2021 to discuss the ways and means to promote Sri Lanka’s Commercial interest and tourism in the respective host and accredited countries.

During the meeting, both the Ministers emphasized the importance of bringing down more affluent tourists to Sri Lanka in the process of country’s economic recovery of post Covid-19 pandemic. The discussion focused on specific issues that hinder the tourist arrivals and ways to address those issues in each host country. Also, the Hon. Ministers gave specific directives to Commercial Officials on activities to be taken to attract tourists to Sri Lanka from their accredited countries. The Commercial Officials briefed the Hon. Ministers on the emerging post pandemic developments of the respective markets to design country specific promotional programmes by SLTDA and SLTPB to attract more to sustain the post pandemic economy.

Officials of the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority, Ministry of Trade and the Department of Commerce also attended the meeting and shared the information on current emerging new situations on developments of tourism in Sri Lanka.

At the end, Hon. Ministers also requested, the new officers before going to take over their duties in Missions abroad they need to discuss with them their immediate post pandemic plan of actions in consultation with exporters and related line Government agencies in a similar kind of virtual meetings arranged by the Ministry and which will be followed by him periodically.