Insurance Service Provider’ for an international sporting event of this stature. Sports have played an important part in the social, cultural and economic development of our country and this partnership with the SAF Games reinforces Sri Lanka Insurance commitment to be the number one Insurance Service provider in Sri Lanka. It is with great pride and happiness that Sri Lanka Insurance has come forward to take on the responsibility of the 10^th South Asian Federation Games.”

According to games history, this is the second year Sri Lanka is hosting this event, whilst it was previously hosted in 1991, also at the same venue. In 1991, India emerged champions at the games bettering their previous record of 61 gold medals to obtain 64 medals. Sri Lanka was placed second with a greatly improved performance of 44 gold medals up from 6 at the previous games. The games itself is thought to be one of the largest and colourful sporting event of its kind to be held in the South Asian region. The concept for the games originated in 1978 at the 8^th Asian Games held in Bangkok, Thailand, where officials of South Asian nations dismayed at the poor performance of their sportsmen and women at the Bangkok games decided to form an organisation that would be responsible for developing skills of their sportsmen and women while exploring the possibility of holding a regional games competition. The meeting resulted in the inauguration of the South Asian Games Federation (Headquartered in New Delhi, India) on November 26^th, 1981.Since 1984, the games have been held on a regular ‘round-robin’ basis, among the participating nations. The countries participating at the games are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.