Thirty years service to Sri Lanka

COLOMBO: Canadian Executive Service Organisation (CESO) a non-profit organisation based in Canada completes 30 years of its operations in Sri Lanka, this year.

The CESO actively operating Worldwide has the support of the Government of Canada and funded through Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

Signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Sri Lanka Government and CESO on April 9, 1976 was the beginning. Since then CESO has assisted over 500 business organisations, Tourism and Hospitality, Sectors of Manufacturing, Vocational Training and Agri Business.

The focus of CESO is to develop selected Private Sector SMEs that can best benefit from its assistance. At the core of the organization there are 4,500 Volunteer Advisers drawn from almost every technical and non technical field of human activity.

The CESO sources said that in order to be in line with Government policy framework - "Agricultural Renaissance" in Mahinda Chinthana - the CESO has decided to add `Agri Business' as a new sector for Technical Assistance from the year 2006 / 2007

A statement issued by the CESO Office in Colombo further said that more recently the Sri Lanka Office has also entered into a MOU with the Ministry of Tourism, Tourist Hotels Association of Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Tour Operators.

In the Tourism / Hospitality sector a total of 135 hotels have been provided with Canadian advisory / consultancy services in upgrading kitchen, F&B, Rooms Division capacities in hotels.

The product and service quality improvement that have taken place in assisted hotels had resulted in enhanced efficiency, increased tourist bookings and resultant increase in revenue generation.

Provision of necessary training and exposure to best practices are prime activities of CESO and Sri Lankan enterprises could look forward to receiving CESO assistance through Sri Lanka Office, said the Programme Manager Shirley Perera who could be contacted on 2327384, written to via e-mail address: ceso_sl@diamond.lanka.net for further information.