Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT), the nation’s number one integrated communications service provider is proud to announce that the company won the Silver Award at the prestigious 2008 International ARC Awards competition for its latest on-line Annual Report. SLT’s Annual Report in both print and on-line formats is produced by Smart Media. Accordingly, Chairman Smart Media, Vijith Kannangara was on hand to receive the award on the 18th of September at a Gala Black Tie Banquet and Awards Ceremony held at the Grand Salon Ballroom of the Jumeirah Essex House in New York. Later in Sri Lanka, SLT Chairperson, Leisha De Silva Chandrasena accepted the award from the Chairman of Smart Media at a felicitation ceremony held at the SLT Head Quarters in Colombo last week.

ARC Awards are regarded as the ‘Oscars’ of the annual reporting world and is the largest, most respected and most prestigious of more than 100 international annual report award competitions held annually around the world.

Out of the 150 entrants in the on-line Annual Report category, 38 qualified for awards. There were 4 Golds, 7 Silvers, 14 Bronzes and 13 Honours. Globally renowned companies that won awards for their on-line Annual Reports included Daimler AG and Pepsico who won Bronze, and Vienna Airport, Bank of America, Master Card Worldwide, Kellog Company and Aviva PLC, all of whom won Honours. Sri Lanka Telecom and Telecom Austria Group were the only two companies in the telecom sub-category to have won awards for their online Annual Reports. Both won Silver in the ‘Telecommunications - Asia & Pacific’ and the ‘Telecommunications - Europe’ categories respectively. No Gold was awarded in these two categories.

The SLT Annual Report 2007 carried an innovative dual theme approach. “Give vistas wings – Metamorphose into beauty”, encapsulated the future of SLT’s metamorphic journey from being a traditional telecom operator to a global IP service provider. “A decade of change for a new decade of chances”, encapsulated SLT leveraging on the sound multi-dimensional platform that was built in the last decade.

Mrs. Leisha de Silva Chandrasena, Chairperson of SLT attributed the award to the excellent partnership that Smart Media and Sri Lanka Telecom have built over a long period of ten years. “The Smart Media – SLT partnership has produced the ten Annual Reports that SLT has published since privatization. It also encompassed the period when SLT became a public quoted company in 2002. These Annual Reports have played a big part in promoting SLT as a solid investment proposition. It is very significant that SLT has been publishing an on-line annual report via HTML and bringing it out on the same day as the date of release of the printed Annual Report, for the past 8 years. All these on-line reports are archived in the SLT website at www.slt.lk”, she added.

‘’Even today, HTML reports released on the same day as the printed reports is a rare phenomenon even globally. Although there were 1,950 entries of printed reports included in the competition this year for the ARC Awards there were only 150 on-line Annual Report entries. Hence, eight years ago, SLT was certainly far ahead of its time. In this context, I hope that Annual Report competitions in our part of the world would also start to recognize on-line Annual Reports. On-line Reports are fast catching up as the primary means of communicating with the shareholders’’; said Dr.Vijith Kannangara, Chairman of Smart Media.