4A wants a dialogue

The Accredited Advertising Agencies Association held a press confernece yesterday and there were some pretty interesting revelations that have come out during the press conference. They claim that the new tax will not increase the tax revenue of the government but will rather reduce it due to the reason that advertisers will no longer use the local media for their campaigns. Here are some of the points that were highlighted

• For an imported advertisement a channel will have to pay Rs 1 Million for broadcasting it, even if the campaign is to last for only 3 months.
• They say all advertisements cannot be produced locally since, for example Singapore Airlines cannot produce their ad's locally because it has to represent the taste of Singapore.
• If an advertisement brand ambassador is an International Star, then you cannot expect them to fly the star to colombo to films some ad's for sri lanka alone.
• Niche Channels which cater to only a certain segment of the public and available in only certain areas and do not pose any threat to the local industry will not have any commercials because of the present ruling, forcing them to close down.

Above were statements made by learned members of the advertising community. We therefore feel that the President should take into consideration the position of this industry before implementing this law. If the actors who know nothing about finance, economy and advertising (we doubt they know to act) form regulations, then all of us will end up acting that sri lanka is improving and in reality we will be like an North Korea or an under developed African Nation.

Anyway we would like to urge the authorities concerned to discuss with the private media, advertising community and all the stake holders and come up with a workable solution. We do not need to destroy one industry for the improvement of another. There is a detailed account of yesterdays press conference in todays newspapers.

When Sri Lankans did not work together it resulted in the ethnic conflict, so lets work together because one conflict is enough.