"It's not going to be easy," said Anura Ekanayake, former chairman of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, the island's top business chamber.
Exporters' products, production lines and business relationships are mostly shaped to suit Western markets and big changes would be needed to shift focus towards the East, he told a recent forum at the American Center.
"In trying to shift from West to East you've got to be careful," he warned, noting that it was not as simple as switching 'points' in a railroad to change the tracks of a train.
"Sri Lankan policy makers talk as if an instant track change is possible," he said.
"Such changes are not easy and can't be done overnight. It means big costs for exporters.
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While finding new markets in fast-growing Asia was desireable, exporters had noted that it would take time to build new relationships with buyers, design new products and change their production lines, he said.
He was referring to the change from Western to Eastern markets advocated b