Sri Lanka’s January – October YoY exports have surged by almost 9% while an export product that recently faced volatile EU markets showed a promising turnaround, as revealed on 09 December. “For the month of October 2014 alone our provisional exports were at $ 900 Mn- and this is only merchandise exports without taking into account of service exports such as ICT” said Bandula Egodage (Chairman & CEO of EDB) on 09 December.

EDB Chairman Egodage was commenting on the provisional top-line export data presented to him by his Directors at a progress review session held on 09 December at EDB.

“For the month of October 2014 alone our provisional exports were at $ 900 Mn- and this is only merchandise exports without taking into account of service exports such as ICT” said EDB Chairman Egodage, and added: “It is time that we continue to enhance export products and market diversification under the guidance of our Minister Rishad Bathiudeen as per the committed $20B by 2020 export vision of (HE) the President Mahinda Rajapaksa.”

Accordingly, January-October provisional merchandise (only) exports this year topped $9.104 Bn, rising by 8.79% from last year’s January-October totals of $8.36Bn. Service exports values such as ICT/BPM exports are not included in Jan-October 2014 values and are awaited by EDB as they are still being processed by other relevant agencies. The leading five markets for Sri Lanka in Jan-Oct 2014 top line data have respectively been United States, UK, Italy, India, and Germany-in that, during these nine months, Italy appears to overtake India to become the third largest export market as provisional exports to Italy jumped by a strong 29%. US continues to remain as the largest export market for Sri Lanka with close to a quarter of Jan-Oct 2014 exports ($2.2Bn) heading to US. 73% of Jan-Oct exports were industrial products while the rest were from agricultural products (25%) and Fisheries (2%).

Meanwhile, an export product that recently faced volatile EU markets, showed a promising turnaround as per latest data-these are fishery products. 2014 January-October exports of edible fish alone has increased by 12% to $211 Mn from $188 Mn in Jan-October 2013.

Total edible fish exports for the whole Y2013 was recorded at $233 Mn while other fish and fishery exports in Y2013 topped $244.4 Mn. Of Sri Lanka’s 75 medium and large scale fishery export companies, 32 utilize EU-approved processing plants.