Our new Partnership with BRISL
OBOReurope and our parent company Cooperans officially announce the new cooperation partnership with Belt & Road Initiative Sri Lanka (BRISL), the leading platform, and consultancy organization that supports Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Sri Lanka. The BRI focuses on policy coordination, infrastructure connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration, and closer people-to-people ties.
Cooperation and Experience Sharing
Close cooperation with BRISL, OBOReurope will jointly present high-quality BRI development projects, business and trade in the European Union, Sri Lanka and other BRI countries. OBOReurope and BRISL agreed to boost joint efforts aimed at conducting research, exchanging information, knowledge sharing and creating awareness about BRI in both regions. As part of this cooperation, we will jointly work on research publications, surveys, promotional activities, and awareness sessions.
Belt & Road Initiative Sri Lanka
Belt & Road Initiative Sri Lanka (BRISL) is a new consultancy established in 2019 and has already established strong connections with academics, policymakers, journalists, entrepreneurs and professionals in Sri Lanka to create win-win situations. BRISL is widely recognized for its independent report of factual findings produced by our team in BRI areas. BRISL is at the forefront of the BRI developments in Sri Lanka and provides a vital linkage between foreign firms and local suppliers to enable knowledge and technology transfer, including know-how and practices that allow domestic enterprises to upgrade the quality and efficiency of their production, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
BRISL is also a research centre that undertakes research on BRI and its impact on Sri Lanka and provided factual information concerning the BRI.
Why Sri Lanka?
For almost three years, we, at OBOReurope, have made our best to cover news and events about the Belt and Road Initiative. We noticed that the BRI is more and more global and some countries/cities have become some major hubs in the New Silk Way. Sri Lanka is one of them. Since Sri Lanka, an island country in the Indian Ocean is seen as one of the vital nodes along the BRI and intersecting with the major air and sea routes between Europe and the Far East on the major East-West shipping lanes and easy access to resourceful Middle East and rising African markets, while India lies just a few kms away. OBOReurope decided to partner with BRISL to facilitate coordination between both regions to create awareness about BRI.
Back in 1952, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and China signed a barter trade pact under which the two countries agreed to exchange Sri Lanka’s natural rubber for Chinese rice. Since then China has played a major role in post-war Sri Lanka’s infrastructure development. Currently, the key investment projects in Sri Lanka include Colombo International Financial City, Colombo International Container Terminals and Hambantota Port. Also, Chinese private investments in Sri Lanka has grown rapidly. Chinese private enterprises mainly invest in hotel construction, agricultural product processing, manufacturing, warehouse logistics, etc.
Present Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with India, Pakistan, and Singapore, current negotiation with China to finalizing the FTA and transforming the existing Indo – Lanka FTA into an Economic and Technical Cooperation Agreement (ETCA) also will benefit and help Sri Lanka to become a gateway to those significant markets. Sri Lanka has a unique opportunity to be a manufacturing centre to serve manufacturers whose supply chains extend across the East, but whose major markets are in the West, allowing them substantial cost savings in terms of logistics as well as shorter delivery times.
Our agreed four fronts of cooperation between BRISL and OBOReurope are briefly,
- parties agree to jointly focus on BRI projects and events related to both regions (EU and Sri Lanka);
- parties agree to work with academics in both regions to jointly prepare a working paper and develop a collective book;
- parties agree to pursue efforts to prepare joint summits/ breakfast meetings/events for the raise awareness of the latest updates of the Belt and Road Initiative;
- parties agree to provide consultancy, advisory and keynote speaker services on request in our two regions.
We are open to partner with other parties to who interested to work along this framework between BRISL and OBOReurope. We invite you to follow BRISL on social networks to keep informed about the development of the BRI in Sri Lanka.
Joint statement (PDF)