Japanese Invest in Sri Lankan Education Sector

18th October 2010, www.island.lk

During a period when quality, cost effective and specialized education takes prominence in today’s competitive and commercial world, a Japanese Education Group has collaborated with the OpenArc Educational Institute – Sri Lanka, to form OpenArc College of Business and Technology (OCBT) - a BOI approved company, in order to provide competent educational services to the local market.

Teruaki Ono – Chairman of OCBT, shared his views on why Japanese Education Specialists chose Sri Lanka, the future outlook of education in the local market through OCBT and the reasons for collaborating with the OpenArc Educational Institute.

Sri Lanka is a country that boasts of a literacy rate of over 90% and overall, comprises of a very literate market. Teruaki Ono explained, that the close ties Sri Lanka has shared with Japan over the years has enabled them to gain valuable insight to various aspects of the local education market, which has allowed them to form a clear vision for proficiently educating local students. Ono stated that, as a whole OCBT foresee great scope for the provision of specialized educational services to the local education market.

Mentioning briefly about their Japanese education group, Ono said, " We are a longstanding educational group operating in Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, China and of course in Sri Lanka; through Open Arc Educational Institute, as Open Arc College of Business and Technology (OCBT). We selected Sri Lanka as a country with great scope for educational services and thus invested Rs. 50 million into further enhancing the facilities and infrastructure of Open Arc College of Business and Technology (OCBT) to facilitate advanced courses of study".

The Chairman further explained that within the next few years, they plan to invest another Rs. 50 million to conduct high tech courses of study in Sri Lanka through OCBT.

"We aim to provide a larger group of students with the opportunity for internships and job placements during, as well as after their study programmes at OCBT. We have plans to unveil high tech courses such as Robotics, while continuing software development for the benefit of students in the Sri Lankan market to become theoretically & practically proficient professionals, with the scope to work anywhere in the world," said Ono enthusiastically.