Charter status for management institute
The Institute of Management UK has been awarded the charter status in the UK and will henceforth be known as the Chartered Institute of Management (CIM), Anil Weeratunga, President of the Sri Lanka branch of the IM told its delighted members.
"We have got the chartered status and every IM member (in the UK and abroad) will now be a chartered manager," he said, making the announcement during the first business session of The Management Club (TMC).
Join the club, one would say. But for the founders of Colombo's newest upmarket fraternity – The Management Club (TMC) – it would probably soon be "sorry, no room".
TMC, under the auspices of the Institute of Management UK, Sri Lanka branch, was launched in mid-February and in weeks has got off to a rollicking start with a start-up membership of 200.
Nice going for a new kid on the block! It contains the cream of Sri Lanka's business community – chairmen of companies, CEO's, IT specialists, marketers, accountants, PR consultants, the media and the list goes on. You name it – he or she is there.
For Fayaz Saleem, who gently triggered the concept several months ago when he was president of the institute, it's like a dream.
But Saleem, a veteran marketer and heading his own group of companies, says it was current IM president Anil Weeratunga who turned a "thought" into a reality. Given the near-house full audience at the Galle Face hotel last Tuesday for TMC's inaugural business meeting, the club is heading for the tag "best place to be " or "biggest gathering of CEO's".
It would probably give a run for its money to the few other business clubs in the city's social circuit like the historic but elitist Colombo Club and its 350-plus membership for instance!
The club's 153 founder members with another 50 joining up, is like a who's who's in the business community, particularly in the management sphere.
"We have a very high calibre membership and we would like to keep it that way. Given the growing interest in the club we may have to limit its membership in future. Maybe we could go up to 300-400," Saleem, inaugural chairman of TMC suggested at the meeting.
Weeratunga was elected vice chairman in accordance with the club constitution.
The club has its special niche corner at the hotel with a furnished clubhouse, boardroom and cable TV where members can meet, greet and interact and even bring in guests for meals and drinks at discounted rates.
The archaic Galle Face hotel is one of the sponsors of the club. Saleem said a club of this kind was a long felt need and said they hoped to broadbase it and bring in outstation chapters.
"Let's set up TMC in other towns – Kandy, Galle, Negombo or even Jaffna in the future.
Lets interact with managers across the island." The club secretary is Uddakka Tennakoon while the second vice president is Sega Nagendra.
HSBC is organizing a major conference on "Key to Payments and Cash Management" on March 14 at the Colombo Hilton, aimed at addressing the effective methods of managing corporate assets.
"This event has been organised for the benefit of CEOs and CFOs of leading Sri Lankan businesses and would be of interest and value as it examines ways in which payment and cash management methods can be improved," a bank statement said.
Speakers at the conference are Lawrence Webb, Head of Payment and Cash Management, Asia Pacific, at HSBC Hong Kong, Anil Goel, Head of Finance at Tata Tea Ltd. (TTL), the largest integrated tea company in the world, and Dave Ranasinghe, Joint Managing Director at Bodyline.
The Sri Lanka Tea Board recently took part in Prodexpo Moscow 2002, the largest Food & Beverage exhibition in Russia & CIS with a top delegation of tea companies exhibiting their wares.
Hasitha de Alwis, Director of the Tea Promotion Division, said Russia is the biggest tea importing country in the world with an annual import volume of about 160,000 mt and the largest buyer of Ceylon Tea with a share of 16% of Sri Lanka's total tea exports to the world.
"Sri Lanka's major export item to Russia has been tea for many years. Today tea exports account for 98% of total Sri Lanka export component to the Russian market.
The performance of Ceylon Tea in the Russian market in the past few years is good with Sri Lanka accounting for over 30% of the total tea imports to Russia," a Tea Board statement said.
A delegation comprising 12 French businesspersons was in Sri Lanka in mid- February with the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce taking the initiative to arrange meetings for the delegates with the local business community.
There were around 120 one-to-one meetings between the visitors and local businessmen. "It was the view of the foreign delegates that the meetings were very successful and enabled them to make business contacts with Sri Lankan companies," a chamber statement said..
The success of the mission has triggered the interest of the French business community and many more delegations are expected in Sri Lanka in the next few months. A delegation from Sri Lanka is also expected to participate in the Lyons Fair next month.
The Central Finance Company Ltd has announced the appointment of two new directors with effect from February 20, the company said.
Ravi Rambukwelle will function as Executive Director (Marketing)/General manager after serving the company as Head of marketing and General Manager.
He has wide experience in marketing and financial services and has held several senior positions in multinational companies such as IBM World Trade Corporation, Ceylon Tobacco Company Ltd., Tootal Thread Colombo (Pvt) Ltd. and American Express Travel Related Services.
Arjuna Gunaratne has been appointed as non-executive Director (Group Co-ordination). He has been functioning as Director/CEO of CF Venture Ltd. since July 2001. Gunaratne has extensively been involved in the financial services sector, where he held several key positions in other organizations such as the post of Controller at Union Bank of Colombo Ltd. and Director Financial Services at Ernst & Young prior to joining CF Venture Fund Ltd.
In a move to demonstrate the defects of international patent laws, British non-governmental organization ActionAid is applying for a patent on the famous British "chip," a french-fried potato that is a key part of one of the country's favorite fast food dishes, fish and chips.
In cooperation with Professor Leo Pyle, a food scientist at Reading University, the London-based organization created a brand of "ready-salted" chip that it calls the ActionAid Chip. In February, the group filed an application for registering the "invention" with the British patents office, according to a March 1 report in the US-based.Pesticide Action Network news service.
To be granted a patent, applicants must prove that the product they have created is their "invention," or that they have altered the product in
some way that makes it "novel." All of the ingredients used to make the ActionAid Chip — namely salt and potatoes — are natural, but putting salt on top of chips and combining the two foods in such a "novel" way
should be enough to be granted a patent, the group said.
"This is no joke," said Maya Vaughan, an ActionAid spokeswoman. "We are able to make this claim under new patent rules that allow companies to get exclusive rights over basic foods and even nature itself," she added.
If ActionAid is granted a broad patent, its legal advisors say that it could win the rights over any chips sold commercially that have the same properties as the ActionAid Chip, i.e. those with added salt. Although the group has no intention of doing so, with a patent it could control how the product was produced and sold, and require chip-shop owners in the United Kingdom to pay it license fees for permission to add salt to their chips. Over 300 million servings of chips with added salt are sold commercially each year.
There are almost one thousand patents on rice, wheat, maize, soybean and sorghum — the five staple crops that constitute 70% of the world's food supply. Six major agrochemical corporations — Aventis, Dow, DuPont, Mitsui, Monsanto and Syngenta — own 30% of the global seed market and 98% of the global market for genetically engineered crops.
By modifying genes of plants or cross-breeding varieties and "allowing patents on plants that are clearly not 'inventions,' the current patent system is giving agrochemical corporations unprecedented control over the food chain," the group commented.
ActionAid explains that patents can have a serious impact on the 75% of
people in poor countries whose livelihoods depend on agriculture — totaling millions of people worldwide. Under companies' licensing
agreements, farmers using patented seeds cannot save, exchange or replant them, and must buy new seeds every year or risk prosecution.
"Farmers in poor countries are faced with the prospect of having to pay for the right to grow food that they have been growing for generations
or risk infringement of the patent. This is an outrage," commented Salil Shetty, ActionAid's chief executive.
Citing the example of agrochemical companies in Pakistan that have succeeded in removing their liability under national laws for any "hazardous effects" of their patented crops, ActionAid criticizes companies for wanting control over crops but refusing to take responsibility for any negative consequences.
The gathering and patenting plants and food crops from poor communities
across Asia, Latin America and Africa by scientists from U.S. and European companies amounts to more than what the U.N. calls "the silent theft of knowledge from developing countries," according to ActionAid.
Instead, the group explains, there is also the potential for developing countries to lose vital export earnings. ActionAid notes the example of
the Mexican yellow bean patented by Larry Proctor, the president of a U.S.-based seed company, after bringing some of the beans back to the
U.S. following a trip to Mexico.
Proctor applied for and won an exclusive monopoly patent on the seed, making it illegal to grow beans in the U.S. or import them without paying royalty payments to the patent holder. The export earnings of Mexican farmers who had been growing and exporting the beans for generations came under threat, as demonstrated by Proctor's legal action against two U.S. seed importers who tried to do business with Mexican farmers.
The international rules that allow the patenting of food and agriculture are currently under review. Part of the World Trade Organization, the rules are enshrined in the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights, or "TRIPS," agreement. ActionAid is calling on British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the British government to withdraw their support for food patenting. =
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