The Export Development Board and the Ministry of Digital Economy have held talks on delivering a US$5 billion ICT export target set under the National Export Development Plan 2026–2030, the Daily Mirror reports.
The target for digital products and services sits inside a wider goal of lifting total exports to US$36 billion by 2030, the Daily Mirror reported. The plan was drawn up by the EDB under the Ministry of Industry and Entrepreneurship Development, with technical assistance from the Asian Development Bank.
Who met
The discussion was chaired by Eng. Eranga Weeraratne, Deputy Minister of Digital Economy, with ministry secretary G. G. S. C. Roshan, Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya and senior GovTech officials.
The EDB delegation was led by chairman Mangala Wijesinghe and included director general Erandika Dissanayake and additional director general (development) Kumudinie Mudalige.
The talks centred on the role of the Ministry of Digital Economy and its institutions, including GovTech, as lead implementing agencies for parts of the plan.
A measurement problem, not only a growth problem
The most substantive items on the agenda concern whether Sri Lanka can see its own service exports clearly. Officials discussed:
- establishing a mechanism to capture and monitor service sector export earnings;
- addressing a foreign exchange conversion gap that is affecting the accurate measurement of service exports;
- introducing mandatory registration for exporters;
- identifying targeted interventions through the Digital Products and Services Advisory Committee;
- strengthening the inclusion of services in bilateral and regional trade agreements to improve market access.
Two of those — the conversion gap and mandatory registration — imply that current ICT export figures are incomplete. Software and BPM earnings that are not converted through the domestic banking system, or that come from unregistered exporters, would not be fully captured in official statistics. The filing does not say by how much officials believe the figures understate actual earnings, nor what the sector’s present export earnings are, so the distance to the US$5 billion target cannot be assessed from this reporting.
Not reported
The filing does not give a date for the meeting, saying only that it was held “recently” — so this report records the date of publication, not of the discussion. It gives no current baseline for ICT or total exports, no timeline or legal vehicle for mandatory exporter registration, no explanation of how the foreign exchange conversion gap arises, and no commitment or decision beyond the matters discussed. No participant is quoted.
On sourcing: this report rests on a single verified source. The filing carries the Daily Mirror’s DM Editorial byline and reads as an official account of a government meeting — it names attendees and agenda items in the manner of a departmental release, and contains no independent reporting or outside comment. Readers should treat it as a statement of what the two bodies say they discussed. A sweep of the EconomyNext and Hiru News business rails found no other verified newsroom carrying it.