A group of parliamentarians from the European Union forwarded a motion to deny Sri Lanka access to GSP Plus, citing the slow pace of essential reforms in Sri Lanka last week. Foreign Affairs Deputy Minister Dr. Harsha de Silva, currently in Brussels, met number of Parliamentarians to lobby EU counterparts on Sri Lanka’s application for GSP Plus. Sri Lanka won the vote in Brussels by 436 against and 119 in favor for the motion to deny GSP plus for Sri Lanka.
The European Parliament is made up of 751 members elected in the 28 member states of the enlarged European Union and is the EU is Sri Lanka’s biggest export market, accounting for nearly one-third of Sri Lanka’s global exports and in 2015, total bilateral trade amounted to 4.7 billion euros. The GSP+ scheme is designed to help developing countries by granting full removal of tariffs on over 66 percent of tariff lines covering a very wide array of products including, for example, textiles and fisheries.
Courtesy of lankabusinessonline.com