Policy initiatives vital to remove constraints:
Making enterprises more productive a challenge
Sanjeevi Jayasuriya
Sri Lanka faces the challenge of making its enterprises more
productive, dynamic and globally competitive. This is necessary to
promote and sustain a more rapid and better distribution process of
development.
Therefore, policy initiatives are vital to remove constraints to
develop national enterprises for economic gains, a Senior Banking
official who works closely with the SME sector told Daily News Business.
SME sector |
* Enterprise
base - a starting point to improve overall performance
* SMEs account for 80 - 90
percent of total enterprises
* SME Guide Book 2009 launched
|
The existing enterprise base is an important starting point to
improve the overall performance and development of the enterprise
sector. It is essential to have a more enterprise friendly policy
environment that would address the issue of improving performance and
competitiveness, he said.
"An industrial policy framework has been proposed by the Government
with the vision of a large base of vibrant and competitive world-class
manufacturing industrial firms to generate higher economic value added,
higher profitability and sustainable employment to offer wider
opportunities for improved job quality and higher family income to
alleviate poverty.
This would provide an opportunity to develop a framework for
"Enterprise Sri Lanka", an enterprising nation in the 21st century, he
said. SMEs account for 80 - 90 percent of the total number of
enterprises in Sri Lanka and contribute 30 percent in terms of value
addition and accounts for 32.7 percent of employment from the
agriculture sector, 26.3 percent of employment from the industrial
sector and 41 percent employment from the service sector.
Seventy-five percent of the SMEs are outside the Western Province
indicating the sector's importance in the equitable distribution of
wealth, thereby reducing the regional imbalances in prosperity, he said.
The SME Guide Book 2009 was launched last week with the objective of
disseminating SME policies and instruments to SME managers and SME
users. It also provides an information base to develop more
comprehensive SME policy directions. |