Q: Are any special benefits being offered to staff in the light of the crisis, and its impact on jobs and earnings – if so, could you cite a few examples?

Our staff members have been instrumental in helping us not merely to weather the crisis but grow in spite of it.

Since the company regained what was lost in terms of sales and revenue due to their efforts, we have felicitated staff who met their targets with bonuses and incentives. We also increased salary scales in our sister company Bhoomi Realty Holdings.

Upon reflection, we’re cognisant of the fact that our key traits of flexibility, agility, and simplicity are the direct result of staff across Prime Lands and the group at large.

Q: And how has your group played a part in mitigating the impact of the coronavirus crisis?

Before COVID-19, people were losing faith in the real estate sector due to bad investments in apartments and underdevelopment. To counter this, we came out with a credit rating for the first time in the industry and gained an ‘A- stable’ rating from ICRA, which is a subsidy of Moody’s.

When it was evident that the pandemic had reached Sri Lankan shores, Prime Lands identified the worst case scenarios in the context of its operations. What if there were no sales for a period of six months? And what if payments were delayed?

As such, when the pandemic reached its peak in the country, we were primed for any outcome.

Similarly, this period of assessing how we would operate offered us the chance to look inward, and reflect on our processes, operations, structures, models and products. In a way, it was a good time to analyse how we functioned as an organisation – and how our staff functioned at the individual level as well.

Despite being financially sound for the past 25 years, we adopted other measures to help us withstand the pandemic – so that even without a single sale, we could build and enhance the Prime Lands brand name.

We made our processes, collections and products more relevant during this time. And our employees realised the value of the organisation and their jobs, and the security a position in the company offered.

So as soon as we opened, it was motivating to see staff bring new ideation and opportunity to the table. Due to their efforts, our talented teams have already recaptured what we lost during the curfew in terms of sales and revenue.

Though on a principle Prime Lands prefers to keep its community assistance endeavours away from the public eye, it is worth mentioning that we gave back to our communities during the curfew. To this end, we donated food and masks, and assisted an elders’ home in Borella with which we have an established rapport.

We believe that as other countries will be forced into a negative interest scenario owing to COVID-19, Sri Lanka will be in a position to market its real estate as a package with reduced stamp fees and taxes, thereby attracting investors and valuable foreign exchange.