Sri Lanka mulls 250,000 IT workforce in two years

“President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has expressed the need to increase the current IT workforce from 85,000 to 250,000 within the next two years to achieve the target of USD 15 billion by 2030,” said Acting Secretary, Ministry of Digital Economy, Waruna Sri Dhanapala. He was speaking at the unveiling of a partnership between MMBL Pathfinder Group and HCLTech, India to transform IT upskilling in Sri Lanka via world-class employment-focused training programmes through a career-shaper platform. “To make this a reality we have to revamp school education, the university system and the industry landscape.

Internships and on-the-job training can upskill youth on IT based job needs. The Government’s responsibility is to harness the prevailing knowledge to achieve this,” he said. “Society 5.



0 is of paramount importance and we see immense potential being harnessed towards this end globally. India being a multi-lingual country was able to converge and integrate all sectors such as industry, agriculture, education via language and IT. The booming new BPO concept was their game- changer that made emphasis on knowledge input,” Dhanapala said.

Corporate Vice President and Global Head, Sri Lanka Technologies and Business Head of Ed Tech of HCL, India Srimathi Shivashankar said, “Sri Lanka is very resilient. Hence capacity and capability building is never an issue. Sri Lanka is truly a global site for India, hence HCLTech commenced expanding operations here.

Capacity is always a major concern. India moved from basic education to a skills-based curriculum to adapt technology.” Group Director and CEO, MMBL Pathfinder Group of Companies, K Balasundaram said, “We are committed to offer job-oriented training to our youth and partnered with HCLTech to commission laboratories in Colombo and Jaffna”.

The panel discussion on the theme, ‘Accelerating talent potential through Edtech – Mapping a skilled future’ gave many insights to the importance of digitalisation and bridging the gap for the younger generation to commence a digital transformation journey and become job-ready youth. The panelists were KPMG’s Hasitha Karunaratne, Oshada Senanayake of Brandix, B Gunapala of SLASSCOM and Nishan Sembacuttiaratchy of Esoft Metro Campus. They expressed views on challenges organisations face in skilling employees as well as technologies such as AI, data science and analytics, cloud computing, cybersecurity, digital marketing, mobile app development, Internet of Things (IoT) that are relevant to the workforce and also on prioritising a resourceful skilling partner.

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