The Cabinet of Ministers has approved the establishment of a National Business Facilitation Centre under the Presidential Secretariat, intended to pull together investment approvals that are currently obtained agency by agency.
Cabinet Spokesman Nalinda Jayatissa said local investment runs into difficulty because the approval process is “spread across various government institutions, institutions operating in isolation with minimal internal communication,” EconomyNext reported.
Where the delays occur
The administrative bottlenecks the centre is meant to address run across project development, land allocation, environmental clearances, regulatory permits, water and electricity connections, and access to banking facilities.
Not a replacement for the BOI
Asked whether the centre would duplicate the Board of Investment, Jayatissa said launching an industrial project requires sign-off from a range of state bodies — among them the Central Environmental Authority, the Urban Development Authority, the Inland Revenue Department and several line ministries — a span wider than the BOI’s own remit.
“This is not meant to replace the BOI,” he said. “At present, the burden falls directly on the investor or industrialist to navigate all these separate institutions individually to get approvals and execute their investment.”
Structure and staffing
A national-level steering committee made up of ministry secretaries and heads of the relevant institutions will be set up under the Presidential Secretariat to manage coordination between agencies. The centre itself will be staffed through secondments from both the public and private sectors, and on a contract basis.
A running thread on single-window approvals
Consolidating approvals into one channel has been under discussion for months. At the Sri Lanka–EU ministerial investment dialogue on August 13, a digital Single Window Investment Approval System was among the regulatory changes on the table, alongside the proposed Investment Protection Bill, with senior Presidential Secretariat officials present. No report has stated whether the new centre absorbs that system or runs separately from it.
The decision lands as the government pursues several investment targets at once, including a further US$4.1 billion for Port City Colombo.
EconomyNext did not report a launch date, a budget, a staffing figure, or when the centre will begin accepting applications. As of Wednesday morning no other verified Sri Lankan newsroom had published its own report of this decision, though Ada Derana and the Daily Mirror both carried other decisions from the same Cabinet meeting.
