Prime Minister Mihinda Rajapaksa speaking at the ceremonial opening of the 14th Sri Lanka International Gem and Jewellery Show — ‘Facets’ on Monday in Colombo said that the potential of Sri Lanka’s Gem and Jewellery industry leans heavily on the presence in the country of as many as 50 of the 140 known varieties of gemstones in the world.

"We also draw our strength from the fact that nowhere in the world are so many precious gemstones concentrated in such a small geographical area".

In September each year, the wide array of gemstones and jewellery produced by our country in the annual Sri Lanka Gem and jewellery produced by our country in the annual Sri Lanka Gem and Jewellery Show, popularly known as ‘Facets’. Your vision and drive, and the commitment of the institutions that support you — the Sri Lanka.

Export Development Board and the National Gem and Jewellery Authority — have made it possible for our country to showcase here today to the rest of the world. What is perhaps the worlds most colourful collection of precious gemstones and jewellery.

The Gem and Jewellery industry is today one of the country’s largest revenue earners. It was the country’s third highest export earner in 2003. While it is reported that 5 Years ago we earned Rs. 3.5 — 4 billion through the export of precious stones, by 2003 it had touched Rs. 7 billion.

Today it provides employment, both directly and indirectly — to about 500,000 people. The Export Development Board tells us with confidence that the industry has the potential of earning a annual export revenue of US$ 500 million by 2007. Creating 10,000 new jobs over a 5 year period, and attracting US$ 50 million in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) over the next 5 years.

While gems have always been an important item of export of export earnings, the growth of the industry into its present form is a feature of approximately the past 33 years. The Gem Corporation, and since 1993 the National Gem and Jewellery Authority on the side, and the one side, and the Sri Lanka Export Development Board on the other, have played decisive role in raising the industry to its present level.

These two State institutions have been instrumental in bridging in new technology, and opening up new markets for our gems and gems and jewellery. Above all they dynamic small and medium enterprise sector within the industry.

We learn from our country’s recent history that was institutional innovations and tax reforms of the late Dr. N. M. Perera, Finance Minister of the United Front Government, in the first half of the nineteen seventies, which laid the foundation for the growth of the industry in its present form.

Having established the Gem Corporation to tree the industry from the stranglehold of a small, exclusive coterie of gem traders by purchasing gems in competition with them be removed the export duty on gems and at the same time introduced several income tax and lording exchange incentives, to steer the industry a development mode, the Prime Minister added..

Against this backdrop, the complimentary rote of the Sri Lanka Gem and Jewellery Association, and the role of its Annual International Exhibition Facets, which opens today, also calls for emphasis and commendation.

Let us, for another brief moment, go back in history, in 1991, Sri Lanka started losing its focus to Thailand as the Asian centre for coloured stones. We started to lose our markets. Dark clouds were then gathering on the horizon. It was in this dark hour of crisis that the Sri Lanka Gem Traders’ Association came forward, courageously, together with other related trade associations, to showcase our products to the external world.

In collaboration with the EDS, it organized the first International Sri Lankan Gem Exhibition — ‘Facets’ sponsored by the Gem Corporation. The exhibition has been repeated for 14 consecutive years. From about 50 booths and about 275 overseas buyers in 1991. We are happy to find that ‘Facets’ has steadily grown in stature to attract around 500 foreign buyers to its 85 booths last year. We are also happy to find that you have as many as 104 booths this year.

History will recognize the role of ’Facets‘ of the early 1990, and re-emerge by 1997 or 1998 as the main producer of natural blue sapphires in the entire world.