{"id":108053,"date":"2020-10-26T16:33:43","date_gmt":"2020-10-26T23:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=108053"},"modified":"2020-10-26T16:33:43","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T23:33:43","slug":"swiss-ambassador-calls-on-prime-minister-discusses-trade-tourism-investment-and-covid-19-assistance-october-26-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/10\/26\/swiss-ambassador-calls-on-prime-minister-discusses-trade-tourism-investment-and-covid-19-assistance-october-26-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Swiss Ambassador Calls on Prime Minister, Discusses Trade, Tourism, Investment and COVID-19 Assistance &#8211; October 26, 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><strong>Prime Minister\u2019s Media Unit<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Calling on Prime Minister Mahinda\nRajapaksa in Colombo this morning, Ambassador of Switzerland to Sri Lanka\nDominik Furgler discussed a number of areas to further cooperation between the\ntwo countries, including investment, exports, tourism and fighting the COVID-19\npandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Ambassador commended the manner in\nwhich the Government is responding to the Coronavirus outbreak by publishing\nclear rules and enforcing them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Prime Minister Rajapaksa said that while\nlockdowns and health precautions can be difficult on everyone, sometimes it\u2019s\nnecessary to keep people safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I admire the way you deal with the\nCOVID,\u201d Ambassador Furgler said. I feel safer this way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To contribute to the Government\u2019s efforts\nto contain the outbreak, the Swiss government is providing assistance to Sri\nLanka with equipment which would enable faster PCR tests at the airport. This\nis also a part of collaboration to try to revive tourism to Sri Lanka once the\nsituation improves. Towards that end, the Swiss Government has also provided\ntechnical assistance to the Sri Lanka Institute of of Tourism and Hotel\nManagement to upgrade infrastructure, provide training and develop the\ncurriculum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The two delegations also discussed\ninvestments and exports. With economic development being a priority of the\nGovernment, the Ambassador said he will work on bringing in more Swiss\ninvestments. Switzerland is currently the 8th largest investor in Sri Lanka.\nWith regard to exports, the delegations discussed ways in which Sri Lanka can\nfurther diversify export product range to Switzerland to reap greater benefits\nfrom the Swiss GSP+ facility. Currently, major exports from Sri Lanka to\nSwitzerland include apparel, black tea, seafood, and gems and jewelry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prime Minister\u2019s Media Unit Calling on Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa in Colombo this morning, Ambassador of Switzerland to Sri Lanka Dominik Furgler discussed a number of areas to further cooperation between the two countries, including investment, exports, tourism and fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. The Ambassador commended the manner in which the Government is responding to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}