International Conference on Economic Development

Disna Mudalige - Daily News 2013-05-15

An International Conference on Economic Development, Joint Venture Partnerships and Eco Tourism has been organized by the Business and Professional Women Sri Lanka from August 10 to 12 at the BMICH.

Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa, Water Supply and Drainage Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa, Investment Promotion Minister Lashman Yapa Abeywardena and Board of Investment (BOI) Chairman Dr Lakshman Jayaweera are to participate in this event as chief guests.

The main objective of the conference is to form joint venture partnerships in business, commerce, infrastructure development, tourism and information technology.

The conference facilitates business to business opportunities amongst the participants in coordination with the BOI, Export Development Board, Sri Lanka Tourist Board and other relevant authorities.

'Get Sri Lankaned' campaign in Mumbai

By Leanne Zara Rodrigues | Mumbai

Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau has announced that its second mega joint promotional campaign, 'Get Sri Lankaned', will be held in Mumbai from May 17-20, 2013. The campaign, which aims to showcase Sri Lanka as a tourist destination for Indians, was first held in Bengaluru earlier this year. The announcement was made by Bashwara Gunarathna, Chairman, Sri Lanka Tourism, along with Muthu Sivalingam, Deputy Minister of Economic Development, Government of Sri Lanka and Sanath Jayasuriya, Member of Parliament, Sri Lanka and Brand Ambassador of Sri Lanka Tourism, at a press conference. The campaign is scheduled to cross over to Delhi, Hyderabad, Kochi and Ahmedabad in the next few months. Get Sri Lankaned will begin with a press conference and will be followed by 'Sri Lanka Night', which will see participation from Indian film and sports celebrities, and will include a Sri Lankan Cultural Show and food festival.


Sri Lanka Tourism, under the Ministry of Economic Development, will organise the campaign in partnership with state associate partners such as SriLankan Airlines, Sri Lanka Cricket, Sri Lanka Tea Board, National Gem & Jewellery Authority, Sri Lanka Export Development Board, National Film Corporation Of Sri Lanka, Board of Investment of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka Convention Bureau, and The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Associate partners for the campaign include Taj Hotels Resorts & Palaces, Tourist Hotel Association of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Tour Operators, and Association of Small and Medium Enterprises in Tourism Sri Lanka.

Gunarathna said, “India is a priority market in terms of tourism and one of the key potential markets consisting vast opportunities for growth in the sector. Sri Lanka is a beautiful destination, featuring a range of attractions. Pristine beaches of Hikkaduwa, Benthota, Arugum Bay, Nillawalli and Pasikuda, notable sights like Adams Peak, Sigiriya, Mahaweli Ganga and St Claire’s waterfall, World Heritage Sites like Naka Vihara, Cenotaph War Memorial and the National War Memorial are a few must-visits in the country." The Bureau is looking at setting up a tourism office in India by September 2013 to help tap the leisure segment, said Gunarathna.

"Last year we saw a total of 170,000 Indian tourist arrivals, which is the biggest number from a single country. With the promotion of the Get Sri Lankaned campaign across various cities in India, we are looking at increasing these arrivals to 400,000 by 2016, thus helping Sri Lanka achieve its goal of 2.5 million visitors by 2016,” he added.

Working in tandem with the travel trade, the campaign will feature an array of activities, including media briefings, 'Sri Lankan Evenings' with fashion shows, Sri Lankan food festivals, B2B meetings, and travel and investment forums between the travel trade of the two countries.

“Sri Lanka makes for an ideal destination for Indian travellers due to factors such as proximity and nearly 100 flights of SriLankan Airlines, Jet Airways and Air India travel between the two countries. SriLankan Airlines operates in eight Indian cities, offering easy connectivity,” said Gunarathna.

Gulfood 2013 - Dubai, UAE

25th - 28th February 2013

Sri Lanka Pavilion at Gulfood-2013

 The Sri Lanka Export Development Board (EDB) in collaboration with the Sri Lanka Consulate General in Dubai in UAE organized  Sri Lanka pavilion at the Gulfood 2013 International Fair  held on Dubai, UAE from 25th - 28th February 2013.

The Gulfood International Fair is one of the most established events in the world for buyers to source food & beverage products. The EDB has identified Gulfood Trade Fair held annually   in   UAE to promote Sri Lankan food and beverage products. It caters not only to the UAE but also to the Middle Eastern and African markets as a whole.

Gulfood 2013


The eighteenth  edition of the annual food and hospitality trade show – as an event that has grown consistently over the last twenty-six years to become a significant driver of the food and beverage trade for global markets. It is clear that Gulfood delivers substantial business contracts and facilitates unrivalled trade opportunities for both regional and international businesses.

About 4,200 companies from 110 countries are showcasing their latest products and technology solutions at this year's exhibition, which covers a space of approximately 113,398 sq m. The number of trade visitors to the show were70,000 among the companies and brands participating in the event were  are Barry Callebaut, Bon Cafe, Dilmah, Electrolux, General Mills, Hershey's, IPS, Knorr, Lipton, Sadia, Tetrapak, Unilever and Valrhona.

Gulfood’s host city, Dubai is a long-established gateway to the Middle East’s burgeoning markets and plays a key role in the success of the exhibition. Strategically  located at the crossroads of important shipping routes across the Atlantic Indian and Pacific oceans, Dubai remains well-connected to the Gulf States, North, South, West and East Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. Adding to its excellent location, the city’s state-of-the-art business infrastructure and logistical facilities also make it an important market for food exports and re-exports. Nearly 50 per cent of the food imported by the UAE is re-exported to other GCC countries in addition to Russia, India, Pakistan and East Africa.

Sri Lanka’s Participation at Gulfood 2013 

• Ceylon Fresh Teas (Pvt) Ltd
• Zakir Sha Exports Pvt Ltd
• Food & Nature (Pvt) Ltd
• Ceylon Biscuits Limited
• Finlays Colombo Plc
• NMK Agro Industries (Pvt) Ltd
• Bio Extracts (Pvt) Ltd
• Ceylon Cold Stores Plc
• Expolanka (Pvt) Limited
• Mabroc Teas (Pvt) Ltd
• G.P. De Silva & Sons Int’l (Pvt) Ltd
• Adamjee Lukmanjee & Sons (Pvt) Ltd
• Edna Chocolates (Ceylon) Limited
• Adamexpo
• Ceylon Agro Products Holdings

Footwear & Leather Fair 2013

8th to 10th   February 2013 – BMICH, Colombo
Final Press Release

“Footwear & Leather Fair 2013”   organized by the Sri Lanka Export Development Board (EDB) in Association  with the Ministry of Industry & Commerce  , Industrial Development Board (IDB), Sri Lanka Footwear & Leather Products Manufacturers  Association  concluded successfully on the  10th February 2013 at the Sirimavo  Bandaranaike Memorial  Exhibition centre at BMICH.   This was the 5th of its kind, previous fairs been held in year 2007, 2009, 2010 & 2012.

The fair was ceremonially inaugurated by The Chief Guest Hon. Basil Rajapaksa Minister of Economic Development of Sri Lanka.  Hon. Rishad Bathiudeen, Minister of Industry and Commerce of Sri Lanka and Hon. Douglas Devananda, Minister of Traditional Industries and Small Enterprise Development, were the guests of honor at the event. H.E Mahinda Rajapaksa The President of Democratic and Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka visited the fair on the 10th of February, 2013 on the invitation of Hon. Rishad Bathiudeen Minister of Industry and Commerce of Sri Lanka.

The Fair consisted of 213 trade stalls displaying Footwear, Leather products & travel goods,    raw material, machinery, components and other related services. Local Manufacturers of  footwear , leather goods , travel goods ,components & accessories and  local and foreign importers of raw material  &  components  exhibited  their products at this fair .There was a  special  Display only area in the Hall A  organized for the exporters and  potential exporters. Sri Lanka’s top brands of Footwear & Leather Products were displayed at this fair. More than 20,000 people including importers, agents, suppliers manufacturers and the public visited the fair.

        

The main objective of this fair was to give recognition to the Industry locally and internationally. Identifying  most creative and skilled SME manufactures  to be developed as potential exporters, building  linkages  of SMEs with the large scale manufacturers,  create awareness  of the opportunities  available for  Industrialists  in the  international market are among the other  objectives .

Sri Lanka is renowned for its apparel Industry. The buyers of garments from Sri Lanka buy their leather goods from neighboring countries.  The EDB’s intention is to promote our Footwear & Leather Industry to attract these buyers to buy their footwear leather products also from Sri Lanka.

SL Embassy in Dubai to host road show

(Daily News - 2013/05/08)

by Shirajiv Sirimane in UAE 



Ambassador of Sri Lanka in UAE, Dr. Mahinda Balasuriya with Head of Marketing, Airport Aviation Services of Sri Lanka and new Chief Executive Officer, Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, Derick Karunaratne at the ATM, Sri Lanka stand. Picture by Shirajiv Sirimane

The Sri Lankan Embassy in Dubai would organize a mega three day Road Show in UAE in September to promote tourism and draw more investments to Sri Lanka. The new Ambassador of Sri Lanka in UAE, Dr Mahinda Balasuriya, speaking to Daily News Business said that this Road Show would be conducted in three main states in UAE, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Fujairah.

 He said that he had already contacted the main Chamber in UAE and they had pledged support for the event.



 “We will conduct this event with the assistance of the Foreign Ministry of Sri Lanka and would also seek assistance of the Ministry of Tourism, Export Development Board, National Gem and Jewellery Authority and relevant government bodies.” Former Inspector General of Police, Ambassador Dr Balasuriya said, that he was using the ongoing Arabian Travel Mart to woo local travel companies to visit this three day event and showcase their products.

 Balasuriya said the UAE tourism sector was expanding rapidly and they were on the lookout for staff. “I am planning to have a Sri Lankan Job Bank where all the CVs could be stored and then offered to companies as and when there are vacancies. I have also spoken to some of the leading hotel chains who are ready to employ Sri Lankan hotel school graduates for one year, on a training basis and then absorb them to their permanent cardre.”

 During training, they would be offered food and accommodation and an allowance. “Similarly, I am also looking for other employment opportunities for Sri Lankans, specially in the health, education and telecom sectors and I am currently working with the UAE chambers in this regard,” he added.

Reset and Change Windows NT/2000 Administrator or User Password with chntpw in Linux

Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP users who have forgotten the administrator account password has many ways to hack, crack, recover or reset the administrator password. Another way to break into a Windows PC which locks with forgotten or unknown password is to use chntpw, a Linux based program to change and reset the password of a Windows administrator account.

Chntpw is a program designed to overwrite and set Windows NT or Windows 2000 SAM password of any user that has a valid (local) account by modifying the encrypted password in the registry’s SAM file. User of chntpw does not need to know the old password to set a new password. Actually, chntpw is now available in the form of bootdisk or LiveCD which includes necessary stuff to access NTFS partitions and scripts to glue the whole thing together.

Chntpw works on NT system which is offline (turned off), and can only be used on local machine and cannot be used on a remote machine. However, chntpw can be installed on a Linux system such as Ubuntu, and then used to recover by resetting Windows user account password by mounting the Windows drive, connected via physical IDE/SATA/SCSI interface or USB portable disk.

Chntpw can be installed using aptitude for user using Debian based system,

It is pretty easy to use and can be found and installed using aptitude if your using debian based system, or can be downloaded and installed in Ubuntu with a simple “sudo apt-get install chntpw” command. Chntpw is likely to be contained in other distributions package manager too, or the source code can be downloaded from http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/editor.html.

Chntpw Usage Guide

1. Mount the Windows NTFS, FAT or FAT32 partition to the Linux system, allowing read and write access support.
2. Locate the SAM file for Windows 2000, Windows NT or Windows XP, which is normally located at the either \Windows\System32\config or \Winnt\System32\config folder. Change directory to inside the folder, there are a number of files such as SAM, SYSTEM and SECURITY.

Inside the folder, issue the following command to automatically change the administrator password:

chntpw SAM

Issue the following command (replace USERNAME with actual user name on the computer) to change the password for a normal restricted user account:

chntpw -u USERNAME SAM

Tip: To list all the users in the SAM file, use the chntpw -l SAM command.
3. Chntpw will display some information on screen, and then prompt for new password to reset the existing password. Enter a new password for the administrator or user account.

Tip: To reset the password to blank (no) password, enter * (asterisk).
4. Unmount the drive, and then restart the Windows computer. The password for the administrator or user account reseted should be changed accordingly.

There are other options for chntpw, which can be displayed with the following command:

chntpw -h

# chntpw help and usage

chntpw version 0.99.3 040818, (c) Petter N Hagen
chntpw: change password of a user in a NT SAM file, or invoke registry editor.
chntpw [OPTIONS] [systemfile] [securityfile] [otherreghive] [...]
-h This message
-u Username to change, Administrator is default
-l list all users in SAM file
-i Interactive. List users (as -l) then ask for username to change
-e Registry editor. Now with full write support!
-d Enter buffer debugger instead (hex editor),
-t Trace. Show hexdump of structs/segments. (deprecated debug function)
-v Be a little more verbose (for debuging)
-L Write names of changed files to /tmp/changed
-N No allocation mode. Only (old style) same length overwrites possible
See readme file on how to extract/read/write the NT's SAM file
if it's on an NTFS partition!
Source/binary freely distributable. See README/COPYING for details
NOTE: This program is somewhat hackish! You are on your own!

The 90/10 Principle

Have you read this before? Discover the 90/10 Principle. It will change your life
(at least the way you react to situations). What is this principle?

10% of life is made up of what happens to you. 90% of life is decided by how you react. What does this mean?

We really have no control over 10% of what happens to us. We cannot stop the car from breaking down. The plane will be late arriving, which throws our whole schedule off. A driver may cut us off in traffic. We have no control over this 10%. The other 90% is different. You determine the other 90%.

How? By your reaction. You cannot control a red light., but you can control your reaction. Don't let people fool you; YOU can control how you react.

Let's use an example. You are eating breakfast with your family. Your

daughter knocks over a cup of coffee onto your business shirt. You have no control over what just what happened. What happens when the next will be determined by how you react.You curse. You harshly scold your daughter for knocking the cup over.

She breaks down in tears. After scolding her, you turn to your spouse and criticize her for placing the cup too close to the edge of the table. A short verbal battle follows. You storm upstairs and change your shirt. Back downstairs, you find your daughter has been too busy crying to finish breakfast and get ready for school. She misses the bus. Your spouse must leave immediately for work.

You rush to the car and drive your daughter to school. Because you are late, you drive 40 miles an hour in a 30 mph speed limit. After a 15-minute delay and throwing $60 traffic fine away, you arrive at school. Your daughter runs into the building without saying goodbye. After arriving at the office 20 minutes late, you find you forgot your briefcase. Your day has started terrible. As it continues, it seems to get worse and worse. You look forward to coming home, When you arrive home, you find small wedge in your relationship with your spouse and daughter.

Why? Because of how you reacted in the morning. Why did you have a bad day?

A) Did the coffee cause it?

B) Did your daughter cause it?

C) Did the policeman cause it?

D) Did you cause it?

The answer is " D".

You had no control over what happened with the coffee. How you reacted in those 5 seconds is what caused your bad day. Here is what could have and should have happened.

Coffee splashes over you. Your daughter is about to cry. You gently say, "It's ok honey, you just need, to be more careful next time". Grabbing a towel you rush upstairs. After grabbing a new shirt and your briefcase, you come back down in time to look through the window and see your child getting on the bus. She turns and waves. You arrive 5 minutes early and cheerfully greet the staff. Your boss comments on how good the day you are having.

Notice the difference? Two different scenarios. Both started the same. Both ended different.

Why? Because of how you REACTED. You really do not have any control over 10% of what happens. The other 90% was determined by your reaction.

Here are some ways to apply the 90/10 principle. If someone says something negative about you, don't be a sponge. Let the attack roll off like water on glass. You don't have to let the negative comment affect you! React properly and it will not ruin your day. A wrong reaction could result in losing a friend, being fired, getting stressed out etc.

How do you react if someone cuts you off in traffic? Do you lose your temper? Pound on the steering wheel? A friend of mine had the steering wheel fall off)

Do you curse? Does your blood pressure skyrocket? Do you try and bump them? WHO CARES if you arrive ten seconds later at work? Why let the cars ruin your drive? Remember the 90/10 principle, and do not worry about it.

You are told you lost your job. Why lose sleep and get irritated? It will work out. Use your worrying energy and time into finding another job. The plane is late; it is going to mangle your schedule for the day. Why take out your frustration on the flight attendant? She has no control over what is going on. Use your time to study, get to know the other passenger. Why get stressed out? It will just make things worse. Now you know the 90-10 principle. Apply it and you will be amazed at the results. You will lose nothing if you try it.

The 90-10 principle is incredible. Very few know and apply this principle.

The result? Millions of people are suffering from undeserved stress, trials, problems and heartache. We all must understand and apply the 90/10 principle.

It CAN change your life!!!

Author : Stephen Covey