7 October 1998: Sri Lanka“s Ceylon Glass Co. Ltd. said an increase in the number of smuggled glass bottles in the local market was hurting sales and threatening profitability, after the company had s…
7 October 1998: Sri Lanka“s Ceylon Glass Co. Ltd. said an increase in the number of smuggled glass bottles in the local market was hurting sales and threatening profitability, after the company had seen sales drop some 5% in the past year. “There is an increasing number of imported glass bottles from India slipping through without paying the protective 30% duty and undercutting our prices,” Chairman Mahinda Wijenaike said. “The danger is that the imports will threaten our local market.” Wijenaike added that some importers were even attempting to sell used bottles to some of the customers of Ceylon Glass. Ceylon Glass is Sri Lanka“s main manufacturer of glass packing containers and bottles. The company holds around 80% of the annual SLRs 800 million (US$ 12.12 million) local market, Wijenaike said. He said the company was planning to expand its exports to Bangladesh and Mauritius to overcome local business loss. “We are also actively calling for strict anti-dumping laws to protect the local industry from the threat,” he said. “We fear SAFTA (South Asian Free Trade Agreement) will pave the way for Indian products to flood the Sri Lankan market.” The members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which groups Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, are aiming to forge the SAFTA reduced-tariff regime by 2001. Ceylon Glass earlier announced net profit for the three months to June at SLRs 16.936 million compared with 6.591 million in the same year ago period. The company posted a sharp drop in net profit for the year to March 1998 at SLRs 34.697 million from SLRs 65.202 million in the previous year.