All Countries and All Sectors

Decades of growth in trade and foreign investment have seen the economies of the world become more interconnected and interdependent than ever before. The production of goods and, increasingly, the provision of services has become fractured across borders as corporations create and integrate into regional and global value chains – a process...

As Sri Lanka sharpens its focus on achieving $20bn in export earnings by 2020, executives interviewed for OBG’s most recent Business Barometer: Sri Lanka CEO Survey have resoundingly voted for textiles and apparel as the export segment likely to experience the highest rate of growth in overseas shipments in 2018.

A host of bold reforms aimed at improving the investment environment are being undertaken after Sri Lanka slid one spot to land at 111th place in the World Bank’s “Doing Business 2018” report index, which measures the ease of conducting business across a variety of indicators. The government’s Vision 2025 mid-term economic agenda targets...

Trade and investment activities in Sri Lanka benefit from the country’s location along busy Indian Ocean trade routes, access to the larger markets of India and Pakistan, abundant agricultural and industrial exports, and a young skilled workforce. Value-added textiles have joined tea, rubber and spices to become a major export earner in recent...

After years of internal conflict, Sri Lanka is enacting political and economic reforms to exert its renewed influence in the region and become an independent, global player. Time will tell if the authorities will be able to implement challenging reforms and position the nation on the international stage.

Hailed by Chinese President Xi Jinping as “the project of the century”, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) promises to radically transform a vast swathe of the world’s trade and transport infrastructure. In doing so, it may also significantly change the way Asia does business with the world, and the way the world does business with Asia.