Sri Lanka interests Flemish SMEs; trade with Belgium expands

Nov 27, 2011 (LBO) - Sri Lanka has seen a surge in exports to Belgium in 2011 and small and the is investor interest in the island among small and medium enterprises in Flanders, a statement by the island's embassy in Brussels said. Belgium had accounted for 11.28 million dollars.

Claire Tillekaerts, acting chief executive of Flanders and Investment and Trade had said 17 Flanders based firm had investments in the island and there is growing interest by SMEs in Sri Lanka.

She was speaking at a seminar on 'Doing Business in Sri Lanka' organized by FIT which was also attended by a delegation from the European Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka (ECCSL) on November 25.

Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to Belgium and the EU Ravinatha Aryasinha exports to the EU grew 25.5 percent in the first nine months of the year to 2,635 million US dollars.

Exports to Belgium had grown 41.4 percent to 382.5 million US dollars during the same period.

He said in the first half of 2011, European investments in Sri Lanka had amounted to 52 million US dollars which was 13 percent of total foreign direct investments to the country.