Wednesday July 1, 2026 4:28 pm Wednesday July 1, 2026 4:28 pm ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka President’s economic advisor Duminda Hulangamuwa has been appointed Chairman of the state-owned Board of Investment (BOI) amid a long failure to boost investments and criticism over a conflict…
Wednesday July 1, 2026 4:28 pm
Wednesday July 1, 2026 4:28 pm
ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka President’s economic advisor Duminda Hulangamuwa has been appointed Chairman of the state-owned Board of Investment (BOI) amid a long failure to boost investments and criticism over a conflict of interest involved with his earlier appointment. Hulangamuwa assumed duty as chairman on Wednesday (01) and pledged to restore the agency’s former authority and transform it into a genuine “one-stop shop” for investors aiming to reduce the country’s persistent trade deficit and accelerate export growth. He will continue to serve as an honorary senior economic adviser to the President, a role he has held since September 2024 as well as Chairman of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, the island nation’s largest private sector business chamber. He was also the Country Managing Partner of EY Sri Lanka & Maldives before retiring on Tuesday, June 30. “His appointment brings a rare combination of professional services, leadership, tax and fiscal policy expertise, and direct advisory experience at the highest levels of government to BOI’s mandate of positioning Sri Lanka as a competitive destination for foreign direct investment,” the BOI said in a statement. As the senior economic adviser to the President, he has represented Sri Lanka in high-level engagements with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund on macroeconomic stability and economic reform. Hulangamuwa holds fellowships with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (CA Sri Lanka) and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, UK (CIMA), and a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) from the University of London. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake appointed Hulangamuwa as the senior economic advisor to him soon after he won the presidential election in September 2024. However, the opposition criticized his appointment because he would deal with government economic policy while also dealing with tax and private sector businesses. Hulangamuwa’s latest appointment comes at a time when Sri Lanka is desperate for more foreign direct investments (FDI) after the 2022 economic crisis. President Dissanayake’s government expected more FDIs into the country after it started tackling corruption in the state sector to ease difficulties for investors and create a better investment climate. However, the BOI was unable to secure large FDI for the past 12 years since the country secured more than US$1.5 billion investment into Colombo Port City in 2014. Historically, Sri Lanka has struggled to attract competitive levels of FDI due to deep-seated structural issues, including policy inconsistency, excessive bureaucratic red tape, high energy costs, and an uncompetitive ease-of-doing-business climate. These legacy barriers have frequently overridden the country’s optimal geographic advantages along major Indian Ocean shipping corridors, leaving it lagging behind regional peers. While recent macroeconomic stabilization efforts and aggressive policy adjustments such as lowering the minimum investment threshold to USD 250,000 helped push annual FDI inflows past the historic USD 1 billion mark, the investment landscape remains highly vulnerable to regulatory bottlenecks and complex, multi-layered line ministry approvals. To sustain this fragile momentum and unlock large-scale, high-value greenfield capital, analysts say, a comprehensive revamping of the Board BOI is critical. Transforming the BOI into a true single-window clearance mechanism with digitized, time-bound approval frameworks is vital to eliminate systemic delays, bypass overlapping institutional jurisdictions, and provide the predictable, transparent business environment required to position Sri Lanka as a globally competitive investment destination. (Colombo/July 01/2026)