Ambassador Kumararatne and Jagath Perera, Marketing Officer in charge of the Swiss Market at Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, present tokens of appreciation to Mayor of Lugano Marco Borradori and Lugano Exhibition chief organizer Marco Peon
Swiss Air chartered flights twice a week to facilitate Swiss tourists
Sri Lanka expects to lure in high spending Swiss tourists as the country recently took part in the Swiss International Holiday Exhibition known as ‘iviaggiatori’.
iviaggiatori is the prestigious tourism event that takes place annually in the Italian speaking canton in Switzerland, and is recognized as one of the prominent tourism trade fairs in Europe.
Argentine peso is the worst-hit currency to-date with its value falling by close to 50 percent. Meanwhile in South Asia, Pakistan was the worst-hit with its rupee falling in value by 15 percent year-to-date.
Indian rupee ranks next to the Sri Lankan rupee with about a 14 percent fall in its value against the dollar.
Moody’s earlier viewed the recent appointment of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa as the country’s Prime Minister as credit negative for Sri Lanka as the development increases political uncertainty.
On the contrary, Sri Lanka’s business community has silently welcomed the political shift that took place, and the wider public has also accepted the change which they were yearning for the last two years largely due to higher cost of living and taxes imposed by the government that came into power in 2015.
The Colombo Stock Exchange, which was mostly on a lackluster mode for the last two years, was reinvigorated with local investors led by high net worth individuals and institutions, triggering a buying spree.
But foreigners were the biggest sellers since Rajapaksa’s appointment.
Since Rajapaksa undertook the most crucial portfolio of finance ministry last week, there were signs of releasing dollars to the market to prop up the rupee, forex market sources said.
Rajapaksa also announced a reduction of taxes on several commodities and slashed fuel prices, although it could undermine fiscal consolidation, which is paramount in achieving macro-economic stability.
In a report released yesterday on global sovereigns, Moody’s predicted a stable outlook for sovereign creditworthiness in 2019, balancing the global economy’s continued but slowing growth momentum against rising uncertainty over longer-term economic and financial stability.
Source : http://epaper.dailymirror.lk/epaper/viewer.aspx