Against a trans-formative and competitive regional backdrop, Sri Lanka aspires to become South Asia’s logistics hub, Export Development Board announced.
The leading impetus to this ambitious vision is Sri Lanka’s National Export Strategy (NES); and its prominence to the logistics industry.
Directly employing roughly over 50,000 people industry-wide, the sector has an ambitious vision to grow from a traditional transshipment hub to a regional logistics center.
Recognized as one of the fastest-growing transshipment hubs in the world, Sri Lanka offers a unique package of innovative multi-modal logistics services.
Spearheading a project to accommodate this national demand is the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) and The Export Development Board (EDB); along with technical input from the EDB’s Advisory Committee on Logistics, EDB sources said. .
Collaboratively, the stakeholders will front an activity to establish a special data unit at the DCS to gather and analyze logistics sector data, with the prospect of determining the economic contribution of logistics to Sri Lanka’s economy.
Members of the Advisory Committee recently met with senior officials and statisticians from the DCS to provide technical insight on fine tuning the data collection methodology.
Preliminary discussions have also been ongoing to assess the possibility of leveraging the data management skills of the University of Moratuwa, Department of Transport and Logistics Management to produce actionable insights from raw data.
(LIN)