Business

Sri Lanka’s construction sector professionals recently called to cut down the number of foreign consultants, contractors and labourers employed in mega infrastructure projects taking place in the country, stressing the practice has proved detrimental to the local construction industry.

Celebrating the ‘World Telecommunication and Information Society Day (WTISD) last week, the national telecommunication service provider – Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) announced the soft launch of its Very-High-Bit-Rate Digital Subscriber Line 2 (VDSL2) advanced fixed broadband technology.

The Dubai-based budget carrier Flydubai officially launched its services to Sri Lanka’s second international airport in Mattala yesterday.

Adaptability and Responsiveness is a highly acclaimed characteristic in business world.  Changing customer needs and mounting competition can only be won by managerswho can lead their workers to respond the changers in an agile manner.

There is growing recognition of the fact that biological resources and diversity are vital to humankind’s economic and social development. It is accepted that diversity is a global asset of tremendous value, and that it needs to be preserved for future generations.

Colombo International Container Ter minal (CICT), which is developed under the South Harbour Terminal project received its first vessel on May 20, carrying on board 3 gantry cranes and 10 rubber tire gantry cranes to be installed at the CICT.

Despite government investments in the economy increasing as a percentage of GDP as well as in absolute terms during 2012, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) points out that Sri Lanka’s public investment is low compared to countries that have experienced sustained high growth.

Mack Gill has been appointed the new CEO of MillenniumIT, a unit of diversified international exchange business of London Stock Exchange Group.

Matthew Arnold’s famous poem, Dover Beach, ends with a rather despairing couplet, “Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, / Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

In April the World Bank governors endorsed two historic goals: to end extreme poverty by 2030 and to ensure that prosperity is shared. It will take a lot to end poverty: strong growth, more infrastructure investments, increased agricultural productivity, better business environments, jobs, good education, and quality health care.

Some time back I attended a London Business School (LBS) Management Lab session, where the topic for discussion was, why some countries manage to achieve economic prosperity that helps them to escape the perils of poverty, while many other countries fail in this respect and continue to be trapped in poverty.

The Colombo bourse saw foreigners snatching shares worth of Rs.1.09 billion yesterday, recording the highest net foreign inflow figure in nearly 2.5 months (after March 7)

Treasury bill yields remained more or less flat at the second T-bill issue after the policy rate cut by the Central Bank with 12-month bill yields edging up 2 basis points

A Darlington firm has signed a £35 million contract to build hundreds of road bridges in Sri Lanka, BBC reported. Cleveland Bridge will design and build the structures in jungle and rural areas of the country

The Rs.1.5 billion debenture issue by Singer (Sri Lanka) PLC has been oversubscribed and issue will close at 4.30 pm today as per the Prospectus

A substantial decrease in finance costs enabled Lanka IOC PLC (LIOC) to post a net profit of Rs.805.9 million for the three months ended March 31, 2013 (4Q12) as against Rs.42.6 million during the corresponding period of the previous year, interim financials released to the Colombo Stock Exchange revealed

Despite generally stronger economic growth achieved by Sri Lanka during the recent past, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) claims that the growth has failed to reduce poverty at a similar pace, particularly in less - developed provinces.

Issuing an Economic Alert, Standard Chartered said that they did not see space for further easing in monetary policy, given the inflation risks remaining high. The bank thus expects the current rates to remain stable at least until 1Q’ 2014.

Nepal’s first Forbes billionaire, Binod Chaudhary has submitted a proposal worth of US $ 75 million to the Sri Lankan government to set up a stateof-the-art cement plant in the Jaffna Peninsula, a statement issued by Chaudhary’s office said.

TIMWOOD is an acronym for the famous Seven Wastes identified by Toyota, presented in a user-friendly manner by Taiichi Ohno, the then Chief Engineer at Toyota. They are the basics of what we learned in.....