Can Sri Lanka become the “Hong Kong” of SouthAsia?
Posted on September 10th, 2009

Prof. Hudson McLean

The Strategic Location, for shipping, financial, logistics, overspill from Singapore & Dubai, a wealth of educated manpower and stable political climate could offer several Nations surrounding Sri Lanka an unenviable Service Hub.

India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the land-locked Nations in the Himalayas could turn Sri Lanka into a Post Office, a support centre.

Major Courier companies such as DHL, etc could have an optional parcel sorting location for the Asian subcontinent.

Unlike Singapore and UAE which suffer from a shortfall of competent labour, Sri Lanka has in abundance a wide pool of labour for most aforementioned functions, within the country.

Hotels, restaurants and shops would definitely benefit from the spin-off, creating jobs in the service sector.

Now that the Foreign Ministry has polished-up their act, the President should direct the logistics, roads, telecommunications to be upgraded to Singapore levels.

Another important point is the Time Zones compromise between the East & West with an approximate 5 hour difference either way allowing at least 3 hours common working time availability.

Parallel with the other investments opportunities, SLG should consider laying the foundation by assigning competent leadership to kick-start this sector.

During a brief five year period, a new Hong Kong should start serving the Asian subcontinent.

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One Response to “Can Sri Lanka become the “Hong Kong” of SouthAsia?”

  1. Priyantha Abeywickrama Says:

    Thank you for the idea of creating a service industry for another reason, which I thought could be used to employ the large number of migrants who were settled by English under occupation, pending resettlement in their own native countries under anticipated conditions. As you know, vast tracks of land owned by native Sinhala population were grabbed to plant Tea, a mild addictive drug, for the addictive kind in the west. Sooner than later, that land must be returned to their true owners and those migrants volunteered to work under subhuman conditions can be used for this type of work without becoming a burden to the nation. Unfortunately Hong Kong is a product of Chinese living in that part of their country. Singapore is another of this kind. We already have a lot of ambitious people who have been trying to turn Lanka into a kind of New England since they took over the power from their masters. The current set could be the last given the step motherly treatment meted out by their own creators. As I see, those who love such countries should be sent to those places to live happily ever after. Having had a lot of interactions with these places, I love to see our own identity for ourselves. At least, we should try to go back in history about five thousand years, as it was much better than today while all the others could have been forest dwellers at that time. According to Hindian history that comes with a lot of jealousy and hatred, our fore parents had used gold plates to consume food during that era.

    We are known through out the history for our own identity that has to be resurrected soon. We have been through hell as a result of our own humane convictions that let to the current situation. I believe it is time to find our own way to build our future. Instead of turning our future generations to be born to work as in many so-called developed (should read as destroyed) countries where 90% live under borrowed assets owned by others and with little choice in their lifestyle while dreaming of an illusive luxurious life that they never realise, we must go for our way of living. We have come a long way and giving up it now to follow others is a non-event. We will soon hear of realistic means to achieve our goals from those who can do it to ensure we live a life full of achievements from the time of inception to final burial for each child desirous of living. What is more important for us is to ensure life essentials that give us long life and meaningful engagement of our knowledge and skills to the benefit of our people and future generations. There will be no need to go behind anybody to seek work, but we will do what is good for us and we will own our work that will be transferred to our future generations. It will be the next set of achievement of the original expectations of our civilisation.

    The current set up has been an imported one that has proven a failure beyond any doubt. I am glad that it has reached its expiry date, no matter how hard those beneficiaries try to revive its continuance. I wonder whether even a tiny number of migrants coming from Lanka would be doing the menial type of activities in their adopted countries. Since it is the case, it will be a mighty task for those politicians to bring our people down to the level of Tamil speaking migrants. Considering the devastating impact caused by the so-called development of many humans living in the so-called developed world, we could be the lucky ones as we now have the knowledge to stop such evil happening to our people without going through such suffering in our personal lives. Let the future decide, why we waited this long to find our way.

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