CB Governor offers key insights into Vision 2025 at DFCC Bank’s strategy workshop

 DFCC Bank organized a strategizing session recently at the Pegasus Reef Hotel, Wattala, where a cross-section of the bank’s senior staff engaged in interactive and participatory discussions as well as focused strategy discussions for the Bank’s development in 2018-2020.

The highlights were the sessions conducted by two of the country’s financial leaders – Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy, Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka and former Deputy Governor, Dr. W. A. Wijewardena, which focused on the macroeconomic development plans of the Government, as well as the long-term economic and financial sector growth of the country.

Dr. Coomaraswamy, in his address, detailed the Government’s new ‘Vision 2025’ for the Nation. The Central Bank Governor reiterated the Government’s pledge of formulating a comprehensive economic strategy that will help “raise per capita income to US$5,000 per year; create one million new jobs; increase foreign direct investment to US$5 billion per year; and double exports to US$20 billion per year”. The main strategy to achieve this would be by making Sri Lanka a hub in Indian Ocean, and link it to external markets through Exports.

He went on to explain that a new trade policy, along with an original National Export Strategy, will give rise to a more liberal, simple, transparent and predictable trade regime. Furthermore, he said that he hopes these policy changes will attract more export-oriented FDI, improve trade logistics and boost firms’ abilities to compete in global markets. 

Earlier during the day, Dr. W. A. Wijewardena, former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank spoke about the Government’s aim to improve Sri Lanka’s ranking in the Ease of Doing Business Index by undertaking essential economic reforms while ensuring policies are predictable, consistent and transparent. The good news for the private sector is that Public Private Partnerships are to be used as a driver of economic growth. 

Simultaneously there will be an emphasis on education and healthcare services across the country. The country as a whole will march towards a new dawn with the development of physical infrastructure facilities through the Megapolis project, economic corridors, improved transportation facilities, build-operate-transfer models and so on. 

The key takeaway for DFCC Bank from both these sessions was that the Government has an ambitious vision to drive Sri Lanka to a high tech and digitalised economy while at the same time keeping focused on grassroots needs with plans to improve agriculture via productivity increases and by linking it to logistics networks.

These insightful sessions proved valuable for the DFCC Bank team during the workshop to focus on future strategy for growth, expansion and consolidation in the short-term as well as in the medium term. 

At the end of the highly productive session, an ambitious plan for the growth of the bank was formulated which the senior management is fully committed to implementing across the Bank. The broad plans were presented to the Board of Directors during a special session at the end of the programme.