Sri Lanka aims at a six per cent growth in exports this year. From January to November 2019 Sri Lanka’s apparel exports grew 5.8 per cent. The industry hopes to attract large-scale orders by reducing lead times with locally-sourced fabrics instead of importing fabrics. Although Sri Lanka has faster shipping times to the US and EU markets, due to its strategic location, apparel exporters are unable to capitalise on this as the country has to import fabrics from overseas, which contributes to a significant increase of lead time. With locally-sourced fabrics, exporters can target much bigger orders and will also be saving a lot of foreign exchange spent on fabrics as the local value addition increases.

Investors from overseas will be invited to set up fabric mills and other finishing facilities in Sri Lanka. In addition, polyester fabrics, which account for over 50 per cent of fabric requirements, don’t qualify for the EU’s GSP Plus concessions as they are imported from China. A fabric park is coming up in Sri Lanka will have a plant to finish processing polyester fabrics. This will allow the country to qualify for GSP Plus. This fabric park is expected to be fully operational within two years.