Investment ambassadors

For a country grappling with more than two decades of war, political uncertainties and rising costs of doing business, trying to entice foreign investors is no easy task. True… most countries in the region carry similar risks but in the Sri Lankan case the political uncertainties add to the costs.

This is why the strategy of investment ambassadors becomes very useful. Singapore and many other countries have effectively practised this policy of using foreign investors to project their country’s success as an investment base. Such investors know the risks of doing business where they are located, have faced many challenges and understand the climate and advantages much better than anyone else. Moreover potential investors are more likely to believe their investor colleagues than the country’s investment promotion agencies.

This was also evidently clear recently when a foreign investor, in Sri Lanka for the past three years, spoke of how badly Sri Lankan authorities handled the attack on the Galle Navy base. International media referred to an attack in a town often frequented by tourists but the government in a cock-up of crisis management measures objected to the town being labelled as a tourist destination! This investor said for many foreigners living in Sri Lanka the attack didn’t affect them but pointed out that it would scare off any potential investor reading a newspaper overseas.

“When you read about Sri Lanka while overseas – and not having visited the country – you get a different feeling of what is going on unlike those of us who are here. The incident didn’t matter much to our security here,” he said. As our feature story on Dialog and Telekom Malaysia suggests, the giant Malaysian telecom company is a huge supporter of Sri Lanka and a readily-available ambassador for investment promotion.

Its CEO for TM International is quoted as saying that TM is helping in the nation building of Sri Lanka by persisting with its investments – growing all the time – despite the conflict which is also escalating. He says that when many others have asked – based on TM experience – whether they should invest in Sri Lanka; their response has always been YES!

TM has provided a lot of support to visiting Board of Investment (BOI) delegations in Malaysia, inviting local businessmen, hosting luncheon meetings and generally promoting the Sri Lanka Inc. story. Dialog’s dynamic CEO Dr Hans Wijayasuriya has also been singled out as an excellent investment ambassador for Sri Lanka in persuading TM to invest in Sri Lanka year-after-year – sometimes during gloomy times.

TM and Dialog are not Sri Lanka’s only investment promotion ambassadors overseas. There is also De La Rue, the world's largest commercial security printer and papermaker, Marks & Spencer and the Taj Group who have all contributed towards investment promotion.

These success stories are presented at investment promotion meetings organised by the BOI overseas. In the UK for example it would be Marks & Spencer who will try to convince investors about Sri Lanka’s potential. In India, the Taj Group of hotels speaks on the benefits of investing here while in Singapore there were a host of investors including De La Rue and TM.

This year even as the BOI says it is confident of attracting US$1 billion in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), up from little over US$600 million last year, it needs to rethink its investment promotion strategies of costly mission visits. Why not focus on strengthening and enhancing the strategy of investment promotion ambassadors amongst the large number of foreign companies and multinationals like Unilever, CTC, Liptons or Coca Cola rather than on expensive missions by BOI officials?

In conflict-affected Sri Lanka, out-of-the-box thinking and new and dynamic approaches are needed not only in the area of investment promotion but other sectors too like tourism.