The apparel sector has set itself a target of $5 billion in 2015 through garment exports.“A further $1 billion is targeted from the emerging new markets in China around that time, together it will make the apparel sector worth nearly $7 billion before the end of 2020,” Tuli Cooray, Secretary-General of JAAF said. President Mahinda Rajapaksa in his capacity as Finance Minister recently released a gazette notification titled ‘Commercial Hub Regulation No: 1 of 2013’, which will be applicable to all new enterprises established or incorporated in Sri Lanka.
Speaking about its benefits the apparel industry could accrue under this new regulation, Cooray said that the sector alone would anticipate an additional foreign exchange turnover of $1billion by year 2018.“We will mobilize all our existing resources to promote the new opportunity that has been opened and significantly improve our participation in reinforcing the national economy”, the Secretary-General added.
“The JAAF has played a vital role in the formulation of new regulation and actively participated in most of the consultative processes capitalizing on the government's ‘Open Forum’ policy where input from all shades of stakeholders were considered before the CHR was introduced,” he added. When the Bill for the introduction of Commercial Hub regulation was introduced in Parliament, it was challenged in the Supreme Court through a petition in the mid part of this year and the JAAF collective stood by the Bill and intervened as an interested party and cited its implementation justifiable as it was in the best interest of the country.
“The five year Strategic Plan of the JAAF which was rolled out in 2010 has outlined the significance of enhancing its present role as a manufacturing and supplying garments to a totally integrated solution provider for the international apparel sources, facilitating end to end solutions starting from research and development, supply chain services, logistics etc. Three years on, our achievement is significant,” he stated.
