Part of what Boards of Investment do is spin. According to the Chairman of the Sri Lanka BOI, telecom and power sector contributions will go down because tourism investments will increase, not because they are going down in absolute terms.
“In the past telecoms and power sector contributed around 60 percent of FDI, while 40 percent came from other sectors,” Perera told reporters in Colombo.
“In the future the telecoms and power sectors will come down to around 40 percent.”
But we wonder whether this is the full story. Or whether investment in telecom is actually going down in absolute terms and the BOI Chairman is simply doing his job (or trying to save it) by spinning the decline.
BTW, the same story states that 18 telecom operators invested LKR 194.6 billion rupees in Sri Lanka. Guess this is FDI and guess this is cumulative. Still that’s serious money, about USD 2 billion.
2 Comments
Abu Saeed Khan
Roaming or prepaid subscriptions by the tourists/visitors increase international voice and SMS traffic. The foreigners also need Internet access. It requires the operators to invest in all fronts. Especially the networks’ coverage in the touristic places, which are generally not much populated, becomes important. Therefore, increased tourism boosts investments in telecoms. If it doesn’t happen, then something must be very wrong somewhere.