The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, with a view to building a dependable, pragmatic and advantageous relationship and establishing cordial relations between overseas markets during the COVID-19 lockdown, organised a series of “Virtual B2B meetings and Webinars” for the benefit of the business community in Sri Lanka. These initiatives were launched since April, 2020 with the assistance of the Sri Lanka Diplomatic Missions and various overseas Trade Promotion Organisations.

The main objective of this initiative was to provide an opportunity for participants to know the current economy, business environment and potential for joint collaborations with key markets overseas. In addition, Webinars were organised to provide participants with an exposure to target their product lines to match with the future requirements of buyers based overseas. Since most of Sri Lanka’s export markets too were affected due to COVID-19 pandemic, we could see a paradigm shift of buying power and sourcing of items by consumers in various countries said the Chamber spokesman.

An eminent panel of Resource Persons including Sri Lanka Diplomats shared their views regarding the future requirements of products that could be promoted in this new normal environment.

“Until a vaccine is found for Covid-19, we may have to adjust to a “new normal”, meaning a new way of living and doing business activities and establish interactions with others. Therefore, bearing in mind that we may have to live in the “new normal” for a long time, we have adopted new strategies to facilitate our members to be in touch with their counterpart markets through online market places” said Mr. Manjula de Silva, Chief Executive Officer of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce.

The Ceylon Chamber successfully concluded 13 such country specific virtual events in association with various Business Councils coming under the purview of the Ceylon Chamber covering Belgium, China, Germany, India, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, Thailand, UAE and Vietnam. These virtual initiatives attracted over 1,500 participants including large number of SMEs. The Chamber intend organising seven (07) more events focussing on Cuba, Dubai, India, Italy, Korea, Nepal, and Turkey in August and September 2020. Virtual B2B meetings are also planned for October 2020 with Belgium and India.  Details of webinars could be accessed from https://chamber.lk

The Ceylon Chamber of Commerce has already signed 130 Memoranda of Understanding to build strong relationships with overseas trade promotion organisations for the benefit of the business community in Sri Lanka and strong partnerships were established in recent times to ensure that we continue a close dialogue for promotion of exports from Sri Lanka.