Volkswagen agreement signed, low priced cars for Sri Lanka?

Germany’s famous car-maker Volkswagen has signed an agreement with the Sri Lanka Board of Investment (BOI) to establish a USD 26.5 million investment motorcar assembling plant in the island.

This assembling plant is to be set up on a 30 acre land at Kuliyapitiya and would provide some 200 employment opportunities, said the BOI. German specialists would set up a training centre within this assembling plant to train the Sri Lankans in motorcar assembling.

An eight year tax concession has been provided for this project while the USD 21.5 million would be a direct foreign investment.

The training centre at this plant would be equipped to train around 2,000 and local and foreign job opportunities would be available to them.

The Sri Lankan counterpart to this agreement with Volkswagen is the Senok Group.

This project is to be completed in two years and once completed around 500 cars are planned to be assembled annually.

Since they are assembled in Sri Lanka it is expected to be sold cheaper locally, said BOI Chairman Upul Jayasuriya.