Financial Times

Amunugama urges businessmen to be lean and mean
Finance Minister, Dr. Sarath Amunugama called on some leading businessmen to help the country become ‘lean and mean’ to face the global challenges and capitalise from the developments of giants such as China and India.
“The smaller the country, the more lean and mean we have to be, because these traits give us the potential to benefit greatly from the global giants like India and China,” he said, addressing the HSBC Corporate Leaders’ Conference last Thursday.

He said that at a stage when the country is planning to go in for a sovereign rating, efficiency is important and encouraged banks to be equally ‘tough’ on the government as they are with the customers and help the government to set standards.

He said the biggest resource for Sri Lanka in the future is going to be the skills and the aptitude of the labour force. “We cannot compete on the numbers, we need to compete on skills and need an education system to equip our labour force,” he said, adding that the country cannot resort to ‘soft options’ by including easy curriculum in the education system.

The annual conference themed ‘Emerging Trends in Global Business’, saw Naina Lal Kidwai, deputy chief executive officer HSBC India, speaking about the Indian experience in capitalising on emerging trends in South Asia. She said that any lessons India has learned on its path to being one of the world’s fastest growing economies will be equally applicable to other countries within the region subject to the same environmental and political barriers to growth.

She said that Sri Lanka can make use of the growing appetite of India’s consumer market and increasing presence of expatriate skilled workers, particularly in the IT services sector. “Sri Lanka can replicate the IT boom in India, because you have an English speaking workforce,” she said.
The conference saw Jonathan Speight, Head of Supply Chain Business, Asia Pacific, HSBC, speak on the Financial Supply Chain and Richard Jaggard, Regional Head of Corporate Sales, Asia Pacific, HSBC speak on the trends in centralisation.

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