The Sri Lanka Government can attract sizable foreign direct Investment (FDI) by auctioning 5G spectrum in an organized and transparent manner said past President Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Sri Lanka, Kosala Wickramanayake.
“All these years, the past Governments gave these licenses to their close associates on a platter via dubious deals which in turn were sold out to telco/media businesses and made millions of rupees for themselves and depriving the State of millions of dollars in revenue,” he accused.
Government should at least now make productive use of this low hanging fruits 5G and auction it. “Recently our neighbor India, auctioned their 5G spectrum and raised INR 1.5 trillion (US$ 18.99 billion).” President Ranil Wickremesinghe has the opportunity to tell the world that Sri Lanka is ready to welcome FDI without corruption, red tape and the new government is ready to show the world that Sri Lanka has changed and all transactions will be transparent by auctioning the 5G spectrum via an online Auction system as done by India. I haven’t seen any suggestion or mention of anything on the 5G Spectrum auction and cannot understand why they don’t pick up this Low hanging fruit.”
That means the new Government is still not looking out of the box for solutions. “We need to think how we can attract investors of repute if we want to build a new economy with exports and get 10 to 15 billion US$ investment in the next two to three years.”
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