The government will be able to create 20,000 job opportunities with the opening factories that has good visionary leadership and modern technology such as RIGID, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said.
The Prime Minister made these comments speaking at the ceremony to lay the foundation stone to build Sri Lanka’s largest integrated tyre manufacturing plant at at the BOI Industrial Zone, Wagawatta, Horana , yesterday with a Rs. 11.25 billion investment made by Ceylon Steel Group.
Rigid Tyre Corporation (Pvt.) Ltd.. Equipped with the latest technology, this new plant is destined to roll in a new page in the industrial sector of Sri Lanka. It comes with the healthy integration of political acumen, local entrepreneurship and proven European technology in the form of a world reputation –Marangoni of Italy. Marangoni is famed not only for its superlative breeds of tyres but the process of manufacture as well; high performing, fuel efficient and most importantly, it treads lightly on the environment! Its carbon footprint is small and clean!
This new venture, with a 11.25 Billion Rupee investment, is tipped to be the biggest fully integrated tyre manufacturing plant in the country. It is an initiative with far reaching benefits for the country and certainly can roll out many a profiting mile: be it the economy or forex ; employment of skilled labour or professional development; value adding our natural resource, rubber or stretching out to investors the world over and beckoning them to Sri Lanka as an investor friendly nation.
The venture would create over 3000 job opportunities, both direct and indirect. It would be a fitting venue for blue-chip professionals, who would stand to gain the exposure to ultramodern technology and technical know-how right here in this very place of their birth: which expertise they would otherwise gain only through employment at a similar manufacturing facility overseas. The exposure gained at this technically advanced state-of-the-art facility would certainly groom them to be the sort after professionals the world over! High pay! Higher recognition!!
Such high caliber employment generation is what the country needs right now ‘for accelerating growth with social inclusion…’ Such a progressive step would mean one thing: to bring an end to the practice of placing our talented sons and daughters into already crowded government work places which would drain the government coffers even more. On the contrary, what the tyre plant does for the country is to create the opportunity for jobs that will in turn create wealth, not drain it, so that the country as a whole can have a future –to prosper!
Ministers Mahinda Amaraweera, Mahinda Samarasinghe, Navin Dissanayake, Horana UNP Organiser Hemantha Wickremarachchi and Rigid Tyre Corporation Communication division head also spoke.The well attended function had over 2000 invitees.