Sri Lanka's exports fell 18.2 percent to 726.7 million US dollars in January 2013 from a year earlier, with apparel exports falling 8.9 percent to 333.9 million US dollars, Central Bank data showed.

Tea exports were down a marginal 2.8 percent to 101.0 million US dollars, rubber products fell 19.8 percent to 62.8 million US dollars, food beverages and tobacco was down 40 percent to 12.4 million US dollars.

 

"The basket of merchandise exports from Sri Lanka as well as our exports markets has remained largely unchanged over the last few decades," the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce said in a statement.

 

"The foregoing situation and change in the global economic scenario, with Asia gaining ground over the West, require us to rethink our export strategy given the importance of exports to a small economy targeting to achieve sustained high economic growth in the future,”

 

"Leading economists and key exporters have been invited to discuss and identify changes required to current strategy to rejuvenate the exports sector in Sri Lanka."

 

The forum styled "Sri Lanka Economic Summit will take place from 9 to 11 July 2013.

 

Key note speaker will be Premachandra Athukorala, professor of Economics at the Australian National University and honorary professorial research fellow at the University of Manchester, UK.

 

Other speakers include Saman Kelegama, executive director of Sri lanks’s Institute of Policy Studies speaking on ’Trade agreements as a tool to access Markets’.

 

(Source: Lanka Business Online)