Not to be outdone by India’s technocrat president, Sri Lankan Minister of Science and Technology Prof. Tissa Vitharana said.
“We hope that Nanotechnology would make a significant contribution to Sri Lanka’s development and perhaps, make it a driving force for our emerging industries. So that Sri Lanka can become a leading economic force in the world.”
Good to see the use of “perhaps” although having participated in a few World Bank related calls with Sri Lanka we have discussed some possibilities for linking and exploiting natural resources to nanotech. The problem for small countries such as Sri Lanka is that most of the resources that they would want to exploit, such as palm oil, already exist in their regional competitors, from India to Malaysia, and many of these have more established and better funded nanotech programs.
Still 10/10 for effort, and good to see some realism from a government source.
“We were trailing behind the other countries, our scientists were always trying to catch up and by the time we try to develop industries, already the countries had developed industries that were leaders in the world. But here we have an opportunity, if we move quickly to become leaders ourselves.”
(Rival news site Lanka Everything garbles the names and the message, while inventing the new “London Advanced Technology Institute” and claiming that Cuba is a world nanotech leader.)