Sri Lanka’s investment agency, the Board of Investments (BOI), has signed 46 new agreements totalling a record 982 million U.S. dollars last month in order to convert into an international hub in the Indian Ocean region, local media report said here on Monday.

The investment projects cover a wide range of sectors such as manufacturing, construction, mixed development, hotel, mini hydropower, trading house, solar power, apparel, research and development and education.

In addition, once in operation, these projects will generate an estimated 8,000 new direct employment opportunities, a BOI spokesman stated in the report said.

Among the agreements signed are 11 new apartment complexes worth 259 million U.S. dollars in investments and 10 agreements for manufacturing projects worth 296 dollars in investments. Others include seven hotel projects, six related to mixed development projects in the capital Colombo and four for setting up trading houses and agreements to develop several mini hydropower projects.

The government earlier this year said that the island nation aimed to attract foreign direct investments (FDIs) worth 5 billion dollars within the next three years, stating that Sri Lanka was now ripe for investments. Sri Lanka achieved a meagre 750 million dollars in FDIs in 2015, compared to peers such as Vietnam, which achieved over 13 billion dollars in FDIs.

The slowdown in FDIs was attributed to the change in the political landscape which led the majority of the investors to adopt a “wait and see” approach.
The FDIs achieved last year put an end to the positive growth streak achieved since 2011, where for the first time FDIs crossed the 1 billion U.S. dollars mark reaching 1.06 billion dollars.

-Xinhua
-Agencies