Viji Jayewardene will be tracking and monitoring the jaguar population in Brazil's Pantanal while Yoshitha Gunasekera will be surveying and collecting invertebrates in Durban, South Africa. Geeshanth Hettiarachchi will be involved with the Earthwatch project at the Roman Fort in Tyne, UK and Chaaminda Kodikara will be researching various methods of effective environment management.

When they get back they will each receive a grant to lead a conservation project of their own based on their experiences with the Earthwatch team thus ensuring that the funds, knowledge and experience gained from this project are re-directed to Sri Lanka, a HSBC statement said

"HSBC has had a very long history of caring for charitable and educational programmes," said Sarath Piyaratna, the Deputy CEO of HSBC Sri Lanka. "It funded the Hong Kong University at the turn of the 20th century and is the biggest corporate donor to Children in Need.

While Investing in Nature was spearheaded by the current chairman of HSBC, Sir John Bond, it is merely an extension of the Bank's original values. For example, in Sri Lanka HSBC has long been associated with and praised for its efforts to keep the Horton Plains free from litter," he said.

HSBC has created a US$50 million eco-partnership that will, throughout the next five years, fund carefully selected conservation projects around the world. The "Investing in Nature" programme consists of the largest-ever single donations to three charities, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Botanical Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) and EarthWatch. Investing in Nature makes the commitment to protect 20,000 plant species from extinction, restore life in three of the world's major rivers and train scientists.

CMA's inaugural conference
The Society of Certified Management Accountants (CMA) of Sri Lanka is organising its inaugural CMA business management conference on the theme "Driving Business through Strategic Management Accounting".

The conference, to be opened by Industrial Enterprise Minister Prof. G.L. Peiris, will be held at the Taj Samudra on June 15. The society is celebrating its second anniversary and has invited a galaxy of business personalities like Badruddin Fakhri, President ICMA Pakistan, Esmond Satarasinghe (a former chairman at Brooke Bonds, Colombo), accountants G.C.B. Wijeyesinghe and Fred Puvimanasinghe, Kamal Weerapperuma, Manju Hatthotuwa, Prema Cooray, Sujeewa Mudalige and Mahendra Amarasuriya to make presentations.

Sri Lanka hosts international contractors' meet
Sri Lanka hosts the 32nd annual Convention of the International Federation of Asian and Western Pacific Contractors' Association (IFAWPCA) in Colombo from 18 - 22 August this year.

IFAWPCA is an international body of engineering contractors in the Asian and Western Pacific region. It has as its mission the development of contractors and the construction industry in this region and beyond.

This international event is expected to attract over 400 participants from the 15 member countries in the Asia Pacific region comprising Australia, Bangladesh, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand, a statement from the local organisers said.

The National Construction Association of Sri Lanka (NCASL), which represents the domestic construction community in this country, has been a regular member of IFAWPCA since 1983. It is also a member of the Confederation of International Contractors' Associations (CICA).

Incumbent IFAWPCA President Patrick Jayewardene, who is also a member of the NCASL, said that the convention's theme 'Social Responsibility in Construction', was very appropriate to the current times.

He said that given the number of participants and the countries they represent, this event is expected to generate a great deal of exposure for both the entire Sri Lanka construction industry and, as a spin off, Sri Lankan tourism.

He said that such conventions not only bring together regional contractors under one roof, but also provide them with a forum to disseminate the most modern technologies and systems related to the construction industry, which are being continuously innovated around the world.

HP-Compaq merger to lever on combined strengths
By Akhry Ameer
International IT giants Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Compaq will draw from the strengths of the two brands in the local market to further instil its local presence.
Both brands that operated locally through various business partners have been hot competitors in the PC and server segments. In addition, HP has been making its official local presence felt with competitive pricing in the peripheral segment with its printers and scanners.

Making the official announcement, Tan Choon Seng, country General Manager for South-East Asia said, "With management teams in place in all 160 countries in which it operates, a three-year product roadmap, over 80,000 sales, service and support professionals, the new HP is ready to serve customers better than ever before".

A meeting of all partners who had been representing the two brands had also been scheduled at the time of making the local announcement. Asked on how the local scenario would change, Seng acknowledged that there definitely would be rationalisation. However, he was of the view that it would all depend on how the local partners take to the merger.

Internationally the merger will see the diminishing of Compaq as a brand name. However, the two brand names will remain in the home personal computer market. In all other products, the sub-brands that excelled in product markets where both companies were competing before, would now represent the new single product under the master brand HP. Hence, in the server market Compaq's Proliant brand name would be retained and henceforth known as HP Proliant, while pocket PC segment will see the introduction of the HP iPaq.

The $23 billion merger that has been looming in recent months was legally closed in May after a lawsuit by a shareholder in a US court was thrown out. The new HP recorded combined revenues of $81.7 billion in fiscal year 2001 with operations in more than 160 countries.

Taj invests $8 million on hotel renovation
By Hiran Senewiratne
The Taj Samudra hotel in Colombo is planning to invest US $ 8 million on a refurbishment project, aimed at placing the city property in line with internationally reputed hotels, its newly appointed, General Manager Preveen Nair said.
"We are going to position our hotel as a total business hotel to benchmark it not only with any local five star hotel but with top hotels in the world," Nair told The Sunday Times Business in a recent interview.

Nair, an experienced hotelier from Kerala in India, revealed plans about improvements in the hotel and said they wanted to make the hotel a businessman's hotel with all the necessary facilities. Most of the hotel's key clientele come from the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

The hotel is focusing its attention on improving all service levels to international standards and also to introduce new technology under the refurbishment plan, Nair, added.

The plan includes the renovation of the first three floors, improving the quality of the health club and restarting the night club, "My Kind of Place" with the help of a local partner. The club is not functioning right now.

Last year the hotel recorded a 62 percent growth despite a lull in the tourist industry. Nair said the ongoing peace process would improve industry prospects and provide a boost to the hotel.

Deer Park Website clinches PATA Gold
Sri Lanka's Deer Park Hotel at Polonnaruwa was awarded a prestigious Gold Award for its website at the recent PATA awards presentation held in India. The awards are a testing ground for the best productions in Travel in the Pacific Asia region.

According to a statement by PATA, "The Gold Award recognises exceptional achievements in a variety of endeavours, bringing acclaim to the best the region's travel industry has to offer. Not only do the winning projects set industry standards for excellence and innovation, but they serve as examples for others to follow."
The website is a very detailed site describing the theme of the Deer Park which is carried by four logos called: Tranquility, Luxury, Adventure and Care. Its animated introduction sets the tone for the site with enchanting images and sounds of Sri Lanka. The home page is captivating with a dream-like picture and a description of the resort. The site has a very user-friendly navigation system that enables the visitor to find information with perfect ease. The web address for the Sri Lankan clientele is www.thedeerparkhotel.com

Lalin Jinasena, Senior Marketing Manager of The Deer Park, in partnership with Affno (Pvt) Ltd designed the website. The previous year's winner in the website category was the Hong Kong Tourist Board. Some of the gold award winners in other categories this year were Thai Airways, Malaysian Tourist Board, Indian Tourist Board, Singapore Tourist Board and many other such large travel organisations.
The Deer Park is owned and managed by the Jinasena Group, one of the largest conglomerates in Sri Lanka.

Voices of Peace
Civil society participation in peace vital-Kotelawela
A prominent Sri Lankan businessman and peace promoter has called for wider civil society participation in the peace process saying it is extremely essential as dependence on the political route alone is not enough.

"A lot more needs to be done, that is not being done (on the peace front). Following a political route alone could be hazardous and is fraught with danger," said Lalith Kotelawela, chairman of the Ceylinco group and founder of Solu-U, a private group promoting peace, in an interview.

He says the president, prime minister and more than 90 percent Sri Lankans want peace with the voices of racial hatred slowly becoming voices in the wilderness.
While acknowledging this view, he believes there is also an urgent need to mobilise the civilian population in the peace effort.

Excerpts of the interview:
What needs to be done?
I suggest that civilians in every village and town should rally round the quest for peace. Civil committees should be set up comprising the village headman, elders, teachers, bank manager, etc. across troubled areas. They should work out peace programmes and report to a national committee.

Politicians should stay out of this process. We should also not depend on the Norwegians alone to solve our problems. The government should present legislation in parliament making racial hatred and inciting communal feelings a jailable offence. We should avoid any repeat of the deplorable incidents in July 1983.

The government should neutralise all elements that have made war a business. This would apply to politicians and political parties who are funded by the arms industry and terrorism. Funding sources of such organisations should be exposed.

Service personnel who receive commissions for weapons deals and endorse substandard equipment - which is a horrendous crime - should be taken to task and dealt with by the law. Such offences should be handled by a military court of law.
In corruption vis-a-vis arms deals, the law should start with the highest in the military to the lowest ranking officer. No one should be above the law. No immunity should even be given to the highest in the land and a full investigation launched if there is some wrongdoing.

McBolon gets ISO 9002
McBolon Polymer (Pvt) Ltd, a collaboration between the McLarens Group and the House of Alliance, recently received ISO 9000 certification.

The company has revolutionised the insulation and packaging industry by innovative product lines marketed under the brand names McFoil, McFoam and McWrap.
McFoam as it is popularly known is used for insulation of air-conditioning ducting systems in the engineering field. McFoil is a laminate of non-cross-linked low-density polyethylene foam and metalized polyester, which results in 95% reflectivity of radiant heat.

According to the Technical Director of McBolon, M.S.I.K. Perera, it is the policy of the company to design and develop new products and a new team of innovative engineers and marketers have been deployed in this exercise.

"Dogfight over Jaffna skies"
I refer to the article with the above heading in your business section of the "Sunday Times" of May 19 on the Internet.

Historically, civil aviation in Sri Lanka has suffered from a lack of a coherent and long-term policy and a serious lack of foresight. I need not waste any time or space to outline the results. We are approaching the hundredth year of "heavier than air" flight and where is Sri Lanka in the field of aviation? We had several regional and international airlines and many local operators. The airlines suffer from political "fiddling" and the other civil operators suffer from bureaucratic "fiddling." Just count the numbers of chairmen the airlines have had - it's mind-boggling! It is about time the minister responsible for civil aviation takes a long, hard look at what's happening in civil aviation.

Your article "Dogfight over Jaffna skies" tends to highlight some of the problems facing civil aviation operators. The opening up of the domestic market has some operators crying out, "Unfair - we were first" while others say," Let us all have a piece of the pie."

It is essential to ensure that while a "level playing field" is kept for all operators (and it's best to leave that to the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) rather than to God!), the consumer's interests are also looked into. Competition rather than a monopoly (or a duopoly) will ensure that. One need not look any further than SriLankan Airlines to see the truth of that! Hopefully, this will change soon.

The DGCA's task is to ensure that all operators work under the same regulations and that any change of regulation is done with due notice and in a timely manner.
One of the operators quoted in your article as the "the most experienced domestic operator" since 1994, has gone to courts against the DGCA as it is "seeking more time to comply with the civil aviation regulatory requirements". One wonders what they have been doing all this time without meeting the regulations. Surely, all operators must be regulated by the same set of rules and the DGCA must do this without fear or favour. To stop all other operators via a court injunction until one operator gets his act together is the height of absurdity, unless of course, the DGCA has given an undue advantage to another operator.

The minister must ensure that the DGCA applies the rules even-handedly and then let commercial forces decide which operator succeeds and which one fails.
It is also a good time for the minister to look at the Air Force "Helitours" operation. The Air Force started a civil operation in 1972, when they had a surplus of helicopters and other aircraft purchased and "gifted" to the Air Force at the time of the 1971 JVP insurrection. The amazing fact is that at the height of the "Eelam war" the Air Force was still hiring out helicopters and other aircraft! When it came to the Jaffna operations, the government banned private operators from operating to Jaffna but permitted some of the very same private operators to lease their aircraft to the Air Force to operate to Jaffna - as civil aircraft (i.e. with a civil registration) but without the jurisdiction of the regulator of civil operations - the DGCA. The Air Force was thus operating civil aircraft "illegally" because the Civil Aviation Department did not control these aircraft. Now that the skies are being opened up, if the government and the operators want a "level playing field" the Air Force "Helitours" (or "Hell tours" as described in a recent newspaper article) operation to Jaffna should be terminated. The Air Force can always "undercut" the civil operator when it comes to costs as most maintenance and ground handling costs can be hidden within the normal Air Force operations.

Leave the "fixed-wing" civil operations to civilians and let the Air Force control the helicopter operations if they feel that there is a security threat. Allow the DGCA to administer these civil operations even-handedly and with the safety of the public as its prime objective. All aircraft operations are capital-intensive and some operators are bound to fail. There is a saying in the aviation world that "To start an airline is a good way to make a small fortune - if you start with a big one!" Let that be determined by market forces rather than by regulatory ones.

The airborne travelling public in Sri Lanka will be astute enough to determine "a good deal" from a bad one.
Industry observer

Carson's Indonesian estate exports oil palm
Carson Cumberbatch and Co, the diversified Sri Lankan conglomerate that owns and manages over 18,000 hectares of oil palm plantations in South East Asia, has reported the start of commercial operations at its newest oil palm venture in Indonesia.

Exports of crude palm oil (CPO) have commenced and the investment of Rs. 4.3 billion in Indonesia will contribute "significantly" to the group's future profitability, the company said in its annual report for the financial year ended March 31, 2002. Carson's Group turnover rose 40 percent to Rs. 3.3 billion and profit after tax increased 150 percent to Rs. 354 million in the year under review. Overseas plantations contributed 22 percent to group revenue and 2.2 percent to pre-tax profit.
Carson's has 13,800 hectares of oil palm plantations and an oil processing mill with a capacity of 45 metric tonnes an hour, expandable to 90 tonnes an hour, near the port town of Sampit in Central Kalimantan.

Over 5,000 hectares of the total 13,800 hectares are now mature and produce a crop of 82,715 tonnes, the company said. The oil mill started production in April 2001 and shipped more than 26,000 tonnes of CPO and 3,000 tonnes of palm kernel during the year.

Carson's reported total sales worth $ 7.3 million with a tonne of CPO fetching an average of $ 275. The entire plantation will come into maturity in 2004. It has a land bank of 2,500 hectares available for future development.

Carson's also said that with the recovery in world palm oil prices, the group's oil palm plantations in Malaysia have returned to profitability and a planned replanting programme has been implemented to improve productivity.

Estates in Malaysia produced a crop of 27,666 tonnes of fresh fruit bunches and yields averaged 18 tonnes a hectare, the company said. Future prospects were positive with imports by India and China expected to drive demand.

People's Bank comes out of the red

Sri Lankan innovation for gems, jewellery industry
The art of gem cutting is a time-honoured blend of craftsmanship and tradition. For the master lapidarist each stone is unique and is lovingly crafted to bring out its individual brilliance and maximum yield.

The manual processing of gemstones relies entirely on human skill and decision making. In the case of high value stones the work is carried out by a single skilled lapidarist who is responsible for the final quality of the finished stone. In the case of the cheaper varieties of precious stones and semi-precious stones, the process is broken up into different sections and each stage of the production process is carried out by different groups of workers, eg. sorting, sawing, calibrating, faceting, polishing, etc.

The traditional method of handcrafting jewellery is soon becoming obsolete, as the jewellery and watch industries are rapidly moving towards the age of technology. In this context, Gemonics (Pvt) Ltd, a wholly Sri Lankan- owned company in collaboration with Cambridge Gemonics (Pvt) Ltd, has developed a gem cutting solution which can transform the entire gem and jewellery industry, opening new boundaries hitherto not attempted. The cost efficiency, productivity and volumes envisaged by the use of this technology and marketing of the technology to others in the industry will allow Gemonics to reach new heights in the local and international markets.

The Robotic gem cutting and polishing machine, developed and fabricated by Gemonics (Pvt) Ltd, with technical inputs from Cambridge Gemonics (Pvt) Ltd, a research and development company, is a multispindle fully automatic machine, of which the technology and design are based on the CAD-CAM principles. The commercial grade machines in their present state of development is capable of faceting and polishing synthetic and natural gemstones to sizes of 1.0 mm and above for standard round brilliants with 57 facets. Having perfected this, Gemonics now intends moving on to other standard cuts, such as ovals, squares, pears, trilliants, marquise, etc.

According to Dr. Vickum Senanayake, CEO of Gemonics (Pvt) Ltd, the company's immediate plans are to engage in the service cutting of gemstones, as a mechanism driven towards proving the technology to the industry. "We already have two companies in Germany supplying roughs for service cutting. The reports received from these two companies as regards the quality of stones cut and finished by Gemonics have been very encouraging. Today employing two machines, we are able to do the work of 25 top quality manual cutters", he said.

Infotel Lanka 2002 in October
The Infotel Lanka 2002 exhibition and conference, a hallmark event of the local IT industry will be held this year from October 10 to 13. The event will be one of a series of many activities which will form the international ICT week and be based on the theme "Envisioning an eNation".

The organising activities of the conference and exhibition commenced recently with the announcement of the principal sponsors. Big names in the local ICT arena such as Debug Computer Peripherals, Pan Audio, John Keells Office Automation, Softlogic Trading will be part of a group of 12 principal sponsors of the event.
Together with the exhibition, Infotel Lanka will also organise pre-conference workshops, a main conference, the National Best Quality Software Awards Competition, corporate presentations and the Young IT Innovator Competition during the international ICT week. Yet another important event this year would be the launch of a National Centre for Software Excellence.

The Infotel Exhibition and Conference was first launched in 1992 under an initiative of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Thereafter the Infotel Lanka Society Ltd was formed to represent the local ICT industry and relevant government institutions. Since then the exhibition and conference has been held on four different occasions. The last event, Infotel 2000 exhibition had 187 trade stalls and attracted over 2,000 business visitors and 25,000 others.

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