Dr Sarath Obeysekera 

When we travel aboard or buy  chocolate to bring to friends we go for Swiss Chocolates which is supposed to be the best though Switzerland  does not grow coco plant ,and we buy Swiss Knives which has many tools attached and popular among  nature travellers ,Swiss stakes loved by Goumet food –lovers Swiss Watches like Omega ,Favre-Lueba”, Swiss Cantons System of governance following somewhat federal system ( which some chaps in our country hate ).

Swiss being a  neutral country with people who are quite calm always go for something quite unique

We have good governance alias Yahapalanaya which sounds musical to so called democratic countries who watch our country. UN keeps praising us and human right groups love this musical word .That is because, yahapalanaya gives you a comfortable feeling sans white vans, extrajudicial killings etc . ( we may have doctors not playing Swiss Rules” ,and Customs officers using Swiss Knives-type strategy to stab the heart of the economy )

For investors who wants to earn money by deriving many ways to get a state owned property or enterprise to re-invest are now having an additional musical word” under Yahapalanaya  .”Swiss Challenge

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A Swiss challenge is a form of public procurement in some jurisdictions which requires a public authority (usually an agency of government) which has received an unsolicited bid for a public project (such as a port, road or railway) or services to be provided to government, to publish the bid and invite third parties to match or exceed it.

Some Swiss challenges also allow the entity which submitted the unsolicited bid itself then to match or better the best bid which comes out of the Swiss challenge process. Indian journalist Vinayak Chatterjee describes it as “one of the lesser known and even lesser-used methods of public procurement for core and social infrastructure projects”.

I myself who believe in good governance and fair play fell in love with this word Swiss Challenge being used in some project procurement processes  ,when I met the officials  of SLLRDC ,which I ran under Premadasa ,  was quite intrigued by listening to young professionals guided by the Yahapalana rules and an aggressive minister . They have been told to use Swiss Challenge to speed up investments.

All Government institutions should be educated to apply Swiss Challenge to shortcut long procedures, and invite JVO.LOC  and all political forces who tend to criticize every move by the state to develop the country using Private Public Partnership ( PPP) .

We have to  educate all treasury officials who represent the state in Boards of many corporations

The word unsolicited proposal is not very musical ,but Swiss Challenge may be only way out to get private entrepreneurs to develop the country tying to avoid tedious process of tenders ,evaluations etc .

Only qualification we should have is, you have to know someone somewhere to initiate the challenge”

Any country ,sport ,business, human resources can  be developed fast if the role players are challenged  is challenged. .
Let us take the challenge and ask the Government to publish the data for private companies to go ahead and submit investment  proposals  using Swiss Challenge

Dr Sarath Obeysekera