RamaDBK CEO, Mr Jagath Ramanayake, has been interviewed by a journalist from the Daily News Business newspaper in Sri Lanka last week. Mr Ramanayake, who is also the president of the Sri Lanka Automobile Exporters Association in Japan (SLAEAJ), is regularly making some declarations or interventions in the media both in Japan and in Sri Lanka. This time, the journalist was asking Mr Ramanayake about the second hand car export prospects from Sri Lanka.
Since year 2009, Sri Lanka has been importing a huge number of brand new or nearly new vehicles from Japan, sometimes as many as 25000 units a year. There are now many vehicles on the market and the country begins to suffer from road congestion, as more new vehicles enter the market while the older ones are still in use on the streets. Sri Lanka needs to cope with the problem of the used vehicles on the market. Mr Ramanayake thinks that Sri Lanka may be ripe for becoming also a car exporting country, shipping 10 years old vehicles to other developing countries as in East Africa, while replacing the local fleet of vehicles with newer units. Exporting used vehicles would also generate foreign exchange for Sri Lanka.
RamaDBK is exporting high quality second hand vehicles not only from Japan, but also from UK and from Thailand for some specific models. In the future, RamaDBK will perhaps be exporting used vehicles from Sri Lanka too.
