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| Wednesday, 16 June 2004 |
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Is our private sector short sighted? CIM Sri Lanka Branch facilitated the Sri Lanka Institute of Director's Power Breakfast Meeting last week, which featured Dr. Uditha Liyanage, Member of the International Board of Trustees of CIM International UK and past Chairman of CIM Sri Lanka branch. Dr. Liyanage, a renowned professional and academic is also Senior Faculty of the Postgraduate Institute of Management (PIM). Dr. Liyanage, illustrated the growing disparity between urban and rural sectors. He said private consumption has doubled from 1997 to 2003 and imports of selected items such as motor cars/cycles, food and beverages, and medical/pharmaceutical products increased significantly over the past decade. An increase in savings and fixed deposits are evident along with advertising expenditure which has increased seven times over the past eight years. Relative household expenditure on food and beverage (i.e. Food Ratio) has come down from 65% to 43% in from 1980 to 2002. Dr. Liyanage described these changes as positive. But, he posed the question, does this mean economic growth across the country? Not so, he said. The average monthly income of a rural household is half of that of an urban household. Poverty is essentially a rural phenomenon. Having discussed the urban-rural disparity, Dr. Liyanage addressed the income and social disparities between the urban and western province. Increasing executive salaries, rising income of key traders are indicative of a new urban middle class (NUMC) whose consumerist lifestyle and ideology have spread the confines of the Western Province. Dr. Liyanage said that the country's formal private sector is essentially in the NUMC (i.e., they belong to the NUMC) and is of the NUMC (i.e., they share the mindset of the NUMC) and is for the NUMC (They, by and large cater to the NUMC). Growth and development witnessed is largely limited to the western province and if the private sector is to be faithful to its title of being the nation's engine of growth, then it will have to think beyond its comfort zone and look at the country as a whole. The call is for a sense of corporate social responsibility, the urgency of which is obvious when one examines the educated rural youth who are alienated from the economic mainstream. Dr. Liyanage said the need for the private sector should think of society, at large for its own survival let alone growth. |
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