Senior Economic Advisor Ministry of Finance, Mano Tittawela who participated in the subsequent discussion at the Breakfast BUZZ said that the previous government had invested heavily on non return based projects.
“These projects don’t have any financial and social returns.” He also said that there are many ageing legislature that is hampering the development and these needs to charge soon. He also said that private sector is most of the time looking for incentive based investments. “When the private sector invests they are mostly requesting for tax holidays and other benefits,”
President SLASSCOM, Jeevan Gnanam said that lack of skilled labour for the industry is a major concern. “We see a 23% annual growth in the industry. However only around 7,000 IT graduate pass out each year but the annual demand is around 40,000 to reach the target of achieving US$ 5 billion IT export target.
He said, “developing the artificial intelligence (AI) based business is our number one priority this year out of five priorities set out by SLASSCOM. We are confident that the $5 billion IT export target was achievable with the focus on higher-value exports involving data science. Sri Lanka has a good opportunity to emerge as an AI destination. I feel quite passionate about the entire process. If we can do this right - we can really set Sri Lanka as part of global stage in data science and AI,” he said.
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