VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Indonesia and Sri Lanka have many opportunities for cooperation in the field of trade and investment. This was said by the Sri Lankan Ambassador to Indonesia Yasoja Gunasekara (Mrs.) during a special interview at Voice of Indonesia, in Jakarta, Friday (02/07/2020). Ambassador of Sri Lanka to Indonesia Yasoja Gunasekara remarked on the numerous similarities that Sri Lanka and Indonesia share, calling their relationship similar to that of brothers and sisters. Speaking about the recent export of train cars and textile from Indonesia to Sri Lanka, she said Sri Lanka was very happy about the involvement of Indonesia in its transportation sector. She also called on for a similar interest from Indonesia about a lot of unique opportunities that Sri Lanka can offer.

“We would like Indonesians to get more interested in purchasing some of our premium export products. We have a lot of well known, world renowned products such as the Ceylon tea, the gems and jewellery products, including the famous blue Sapphire. We have the Colombo port city that is now coming up. It's almost completed. There are huge potential in real estate there, there's going to be opportunities in the logistics area. You have opportunities in manufacturing. We have Export Processing zones around the country, and Sri Lanka has various skilled labour. We'd like a lot more business to business cooperation between the two countries. Both the governments have made it clear; both the leaders have made it clear that the businessmen of the two communities could work together so much more closely to explore the possibilities. So, there's so much that we can do," she said.

She said there is a budding interest in Sri Lanka to invest more in Indonesia considering the fast rate of economic growth Indonesia has. She also remarked that although Sri Lanka had a free trade agreement with India, preferential trading agreement with Pakistan and a free trade agreement with Singapore, it still doesn’t have one with Indonesia. However, Ambassador Yasoja hoped that the leaders of the countries will have this conversation and said that Sri Lanka is very interested in engaging with Indonesia on this. (VOI/SAYEE SHREE L.R/AHM)