John Linton
......as we only have one at the moment (a second one will be delivered late next week) and the one we have must be kept available for the Ambassador or his deputy......
Perhaps not quite what Annette and I wanted to hear from the Austrade official who came to our hotel to advise us of some last minute changes to the visit schedule he had arranged for us based on our requests prior to the trip. His armoured car reference was a post script to his apologies for his inability to accompany us on our first two visits to Sri Lanka government departments on Monday morning as all Embassy personnel had, for safety reasons, been ordered not to go to the 'zone' (that contained all the Sri Lankan government departments) following the suspicious 'road accident' death of an ex-government minister earlier that afternoon who had quit the ruling party and joined the opposition as the most outspoken critic of the current government and particularly the prime minister.
However we spent a pleasant hour over a cup of coffee while he briefed us on the people we were going to meet and the more general background of the current economic and political issues as well as general information about doing business in Sri Lanka. Nice to see our taxes being used effectively even if we did have to pay directly for Austrade's services in organising our particular requirements.
The main offices of the departments we are going to visit first thing tomorrow are housed in the worryingly named "World Trade Centre" which happens to be designed as two twin towers adjacent to each other which are easily the tallest buildings in Colombo's CBD - haven't I heard that building name before somewhere? Oh well...the things we do for Exetel's customer's well being.
We have a very full schedule with 12 separate meetings crammed in to two days which has now been made a little easier with the majority of the first day's meetings (apart from the government ones) being held at the Austrade's offices which will at least cut down the travel time. It could be a very interesting two days aimed at getting a first hand understanding of what, if anything, a small company like Exetel can do in this country in terms of offering services here. We have no doubts, based on the prior research we've done that it will be extremely difficult for us but we have the opportunity of 'pitching' our case to Sri Lanka Telecom with, depending on the outcomes of our previous meetings with the two government departments we will have met with by that time, hopefully some at least tacit support for our proposals.
Why does a tiny company like Exetel think it can do such things? Because we have a very different raison d'etre for operating in Australia which we can demonstrate and our proposal regarding Sri Lanka doesn't involve financial gain for us nor does it involve 'exporting' profits from Sri Lanka but only investing money in to the country. I don't know what sort of reception we will get but we will make a novel, financially and technologically sound proposal that is, at least on a balanced viewpoint, a really sensible thing to do.
If we don't get anywhere then at least we will have tried to solve one of the future 'barriers' that we will have to overcome in the not too distant future and will have closed off one, probably based on our current understanding - the best, solution to overcoming that future barrier. We'll also have visited a city that neither of us have ever been to and will have picked up some useful first hand knowledge about the people we currently employ and the people we may employ in the future. We will also have taken the first, albeit most likely faltering, step in the long and difficult path of making Exetel less vulnerable to operating in a single country where the monopolist telco only has the objective of ensuring our sort of company goes out of business.
I just wish there were less soldiers with automatic weapons and full combat kit in so many, to me - a casual visitor, innocuous looking places.
Come to think of it tomorrow is the 11th.