The Sri Lanka Center, which was set up in Shanghai in 2008, won recently the award for the Best Design among 2200 stores and centers located at the Shanghai Mart, a prestigious high rise building in China’s main commercial hub. The selection was made by online voting by the public. The Sri Lanka Center was set up as part of a greater strategy of the Board of Investment, to attract investments from China, which is one of the fastest growing economies in Asia.

The Center is located in the Shanghai Mart, a prestigious property built and owned by the Shin Kwan Group, a leading Singapore based conglomerate headed and owned by S.P Tao, the construction magnate who built and owns Colombo’s World trade Center and the Havelock City.

The Sri Lanka Center was designed by Anuja Madhushanka, a Sri Lankan citizen, who graduated from the prestigious Beijing Film Academy which is the Alma Mater of many of China’s leading film directors such as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige.

This Center has played an important role in promoting investment at the source by showcasing many of the products and services available in Sri Lanka. Hence Chinese Investors now have a very clear idea of Sri Lanka’s potential for manufacturing high quality products of international standard.

The BOI had selected Shanghai, as it has always been the economic focal point of that huge country being a window on the outside world. Shanghai is a city with an annual GDP growth of 10%, which has attracted investments from enterprises from over 130 countries that have invested in 50,000 projects. Hence there is no better location to set up a center in China.

The Sri Lanka Center features a wide range of products made in Sri Lanka including manufactured and value added goods such as tea, beauty care products, food products, apparel, ceramics and gems and jewellery.

It will also serve as an information center and investors will be able to find out about the modalities to set up investment projects in Sri Lanka. The Center therefore has a wide selection of literature on investment and industries in the Chinese language and in English. Among the companies represented and Sri Lankan brand names are Nature’s Beauty, Mackwoods, Dilmah, Stassens International, Essuwaran Brothers and Ceylon Biscuits (Munchee). Also represented were high fashion apparel manufacturers Brandix and Omega Line.

This importance of this service lies in its ability to tap Chinese investment at a crucial time when China’s massive economic growth is coupled with a growing demand for consumer goods.

In addition, Chinese enterprises have begun some years back, to invest in many parts of the world, changing the traditional landscape of global investment.