Nirmali leads her company and trade chamber with equal ease

by Irangika Range

Like most other successful entrepreneurs, believing in hard work, commitment and having efficient work focus on what to achieve, a young woman has come up in her own career by achieving many goals and winning accolades in her official life as well as family business with her successful work performance.

She is Nirmali Samaratunga , the current President of the National Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka (NCCSL) who is the first Woman President to head a trade chamber in Sri Lanka.

Elected to the Chamber as a chairperson of its agents committee in 1996, she climbed up the ladder gaining work experience and bearing many posts at the Chamber. She was appointed as President this year targeting to meet the needs of the members and enable the businesses in Sri Lanka to enhance competitiveness. Having gained 22 years working experience to run the family business and getting respect and recognition for her performance and work capability.

Today, Nirmali is also the Co-Chairman/Joint Managing Director of Mackwoods Limited, the second oldest mercantile organisation established in 1941, running with 200 subsidiaries and 10,000 employees.

She was a past pupil of the St. Bridget's Convent and went to UK for further her higher studies and qualified herself academically. She is a qualified professional of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants in UK. "When I came back to my country I wanted to start my career from the bottom rung and joined as a management trainee at Mackwoods.

Although it is a family business, my mother and my grandfather wanted to merge me as a businesswoman in Sri Lanka giving stronger support to promote her career. Facing many challenges and proving capability of her work she was promoted as a junior executive and was able to work with her mother as a Deputy Chairperson in 2004.

With the support, correct attitudes, and commitment of my team offering quality service to society she is able to run the business successfully with her brother Dr. C.N.O. Nonis.

Today women have reached the top by qualifying professionally and by experiences because they have lot of organisational skills and they face lot of multitasks in the society. Specially rural women are very keen on developing their career but they need cutting edge technology needs, education and training to promote their business.

She plays a big role working as a mother, businesswomen and Chamber President. She manages everything with sound time management skills by doing hard work and getting correct decisions to achieve her goals without neglecting all these aspects.

NCCSL commenced operations in 1948 to help the indigenous the local business community. This year the Chamber celebrated 50 years of its incorporation highlighting the progress which it made to make people aware and contributed to strengthen the local business community with diversified and restructured services to over 400 corporate members of the NCCSL.

The NCCSL provides special emphasis for the development of SME's because it contributes 60 percent to the GDP while 70 percent of employees are involved in the SME sector in Sri Lanka.

The Chamber has set up the Federation of Association of District SME's and it is implemented in 15 districts.

Websites are being developed for the SME Federation and each district Association with provision for SME members to have their own web page with visuals.

The SME unit undertakes servicing the 2,000 SMEs in the Federation of SME's including workshops, training, global trade links and SME business forum which are continually charring out with the assistance of regional branches.

She said in addition to helping tsunami affected SMEs, the Chamber has launched a tsunami disaster rehabilitation project in the South as well as in the Northeast.

'We were able to assist in promoting many cottage industrialists to get them back to business by facilitating them to earn on a daily basis.

The Chamber has identified local SMEs needs and the support from all chambers and the government should be provided to upgrade their business especially in rural areas. Our major aim is to encourage local entrepreneurs by exploring possibilities to access the international market and link to joint ventures.

The NCCSL conducts the Intrad trade show once in two years with many local and foreign delegations to attract more investment to the country. It also conducts the "Business Excellence Awards " to honour best businessmen who are selected by a panel of judges on their best business performances. this year it will be held on November 22.

Her husband and two daughters have given her the strength to become successful in life.