‘Com. banks could boost SME sector’

H.D.H Senewiratne

Most Sri Lankan commercial banks could consider special interest, rates/concessions for local small and SME sectors with their excessive funds to enhance business activities in the country as most of the banks have recorded very high profits during the last few years, President, Sri Lanka Chamber of Small and Medium Industries Aloy Jayawardene said.

“Local small and SME sector is the largest sector which holds 70 percent of the country's business. If commercial banks could consider a special interest rate or concession, we could increase the economic development two fold,”Jayawardene told Daily News Business.

He said that if the small and SME sector boosts, the country could bridge the budget deficit to a large extent, which would in turn help the country and the economy in a large way. But unfortunately, small and SME sector could not obtain loans because of certain restrictions.

“If those restrictions would relax to some extent, we could expect a higher economic growth from medium to a short term perspective,” Jayewardene said. When we started the Industry 'Excellence Awards' in 2008, we received more than 120 applications, including Jaffna, which prompted us to continue the event due to its immense success during that year, Jayawardene said, He said that they had categorised sectors based on assets value of the entity.

The asset value below Rs 50 million has been considered as a small sector. The asset value between Rs 50 to150 million, belonged to medium sectors and the asset value more than Rs 200 million, envisaged as larger category.