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BOI goes hi-tech and broadens facilities to attract investors
The government has set a target of US dollars 2.5 billion as foreign direct investment for the Board of Investment (BOI) by the end of the year, but so far only a sum of US dollars 780 million has been invested, a senior official of the Board said.
BOI Director General E.A.J. Edirisinghe told the Sunday Times that to achieve this target the structure of the BOI has been revised and revamped.
“An investor will not be willing to visit Sri Lanka two or three times to finalise his investment. They need to complete the task in a short period. Therefore we have developed an IT based system where the investor will be able to monitor online the progress of a project,” he said, adding that the investor would be able to make applications, payments and even apply for a visa online.
“The target is that within two weeks approval should be given for the project. We had not done this earlier,” he added.
“In the event the investment is not approved within two weeks the system will send out alerts to the BOI Chairman and the DG who in turn will take action to expedite the approval,” he said.
In addition a loyalty card would be issued to investors depending on their volume of investments
“We will have three categories, as gold, silver and bronze with the gold being issued for more than 100 million US dollars,” he said, adding that from the point of arrival at the BIA the investor would be provided facilities including a separate counter at the arrival lounge to extend their visas, priority service at state banks, the Inland Revenue Dept. and other government institutes.
He said that information regarding state projects would be made available to the investor, instead of the investor going in search of information.