The V4 industrial economy billed as the Tetra Tiger due to its high growth, has revealed for the first time that it wants to synergise Lanka’s historic FTAs to penetrate South Asia, as informed on 27 November-and it is also readying for new bilateral efforts of high capacity across the board-in Lanka’s wheat production, energy and even defence! “Our aim is to make Sri Lanka our business and investment platform to South Asia. There are many Slovakian manufacturers ready to invest here, produce and export to South Asian markets using your FTAs with India and Pakistan” said an ardent Peter Burian (State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic) on 27 November in Colombo.

State Secretary Burian was making a courtesy call on Minister Bathiudeen with two members of his official delegation to Sri Lanka on 27 November in Colombo. Joining Minister Bathiudeen at the in-depth discussions were Bandula Egodage (Chairman & CEO-EDB) and other top EDB officials.

“Our intention is to renew trade with Sri Lanka. It is time to leverage the political friendship and understanding between both countries towards trade and investment promotion at both sides. We have something to offer in every aspect of Sri Lanka’s five hub development strategy. As a start, and as part of renewal of our trade, it is now time to revise the Agreement on Avoidance of Double Taxation between both countries since we find that there is a strong need for its revision in par with latest developments” said State Secretary Burian, and added: “To promote business and trade, we want to send a top Slovak business delegation to Sri Lanka next year led by our Minister of Economy. Our aim is to make Sri Lanka our business and investment platform to South Asia starting with increased people-to-people contacts. We are ready to provide support for electrification of Sri Lankan railways and I see many opportunities in energy cooperation. We are very interested in SME and industrial cooperation with Sri Lanka-there are many Slovakian manufacturers ready to invest here, produce and export to South Asian markets using your FTAs with India and Pakistan. I propose to introduce a Bilateral Investment Protection Agreement between both countries. Negotiation between both countries on this regard is already on-going but we are keen to speed this process up. Slovakia is strong in IT & ICT–specially information security and enterprise software –for instance, 10% of global anti-virus market is claimed by ESET Corp, a Slovakian security software firm. Therefore enterprise and information security IT partnership is a possibility that we can explore. I also suggest that we continue to talk on defence cooperation and defence industries at bilateral levels. In defence, we can base our cooperation on very important traditions from the past.”

V4 stands for Visegrád Four (or Visegrád Group) -an alliance of four Central European states of Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia who grouped as V4 in 1991 to further their EU integration and to advance their military, economic and energy cooperation. Slovakia, with its Tetra Mountain Range, was also called as the ‘Tetra Tiger’ due to its raging GDP growth up-to 2007.

“We shall warmly welcome your strong business delegation to Sri Lanka next year and look forward to it. We welcome industrial cooperation from an industrial giant like Slovakia and we look forward to manufacturing partnerships under the Hub vision of our (HE) the President Mahinda Rajapaksa” said Minister Bathiudeen, and added: “Our main export to Slovakia is apparel. With the efforts of my Department of Commerce and EDB, we have diversified our exports to Slovakia beyond apparel, with tyres, coconut fibre, rubber tubes and other textile articles. Still there is great, unrealised trade potentials that we need to explore since $ 21 Mn total trade shows that we are largely virgin markets to each other. And since 95% of our exports to Slovakia are our apparels, we invite Slovakian investments to this sector as well.”

Trade between the Slovak Republic and Sri Lanka has been rather negligible until 2008 when Lankan exports to Slovakia suddenly doubled, driven by Slovak demand for Lankan apparels. In 2013, total trade between the two countries rose by 29% to $21 Mn, once again driven by increased demand for apparel. The balance of trade between Sri Lanka and Slovakia has been in favour of Sri Lanka up to now.

State Secretary Burian added: “Also we are willing to provide research support, preferably jointly, to develop a strong wheat seed to Sri Lanka that is ideal for difficult climatic conditions and Lankan climate.”

Minister Bathiudeen, responding, said: “We import almost 900,000 metric tonnes of wheat annually and therefore your support to kick-start our wheat production could save our foreign exchange considerably.”

In 2013, imports of wheat and maize (in comparison to 2010) to Sri Lankan have jumped by a strong 38.5%. The total value of wheat and maize imports to Sri Lanka (2013) was $323 Mn, of which $312 Mn was wheat (consisting of almost 900,000 Metric Tonnes).