President of Federation of Chambers of Commerce & Industry of Sri Lanka (FCCISL) Keerthi Gunawardane highlighted the need for financial inclusivity – especially for businesspeople and entrepreneurs in the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector – and innovative thinking.
For Gunawardane, the most crucial priority for the sector is having low-cost financing options. He explained that “after the pandemic, SMEs find themselves in a very difficult situation as no low-cost financing methods have been introduced. Moratoriums have gone, the extensions are now over and banks are requesting enterprises to repay their loans.”
He called for more development banks for a country like Sri Lanka, which needs to progress through entrepreneurship: “Until we have low cost capital, it’s very hard for anyone to start a business.”
“When you take young entrepreneurs, they have good business ideas; but they do not have capital. If they go to a commercial bank, they’ll have to provide collateral – where’s the collateral for a young person who’s just passed out from university or gained a technical qualification and has some very good ideas for a business?” he asked.
The increasing cost of production is another issue for SMEs, which is critical to Sri Lanka but is also a global phenomenon. “All over the world, costs are going up; so the challenge for businesses is to reduce their costs and improve productivity,” he asserted.
He recommended sourcing more local raw materials: “After the pandemic, we learned a lesson that if you depend too much on imported raw materials, you’ll have enormous disruptions to your production.”
Gunawardane added: “Even countries like Australia and Japan realised that their production lines came to a stop during that time. So everyone is now looking at doing something on their own using local raw materials, which can be very viable as well as reliable.”
“We have many raw materials that we’ve not explored; and we even export some in bulk without any value additions at very low prices,” he pointed out, noting that new technology will enable businesses to produce goods locally at a much lower cost using homegrown raw materials.
Environmental sustainability is a key agenda item for the President of Federation of Chambers of Commerce & Industry of Sri Lanka. He called on businesses to reduce carbon emissions and their carbon footprint to ensure that production is carbon neutral.
One way of achieving this, according to him, is innovations using new technology. This can help businesses reduce their energy costs and attain optimum levels of production.
Innovations are also key to bringing more value additions to existing products, he posited: “Today, the world is looking at green products; so if you can add more value by offering greener products, there will be a demand all over the world.”
And he stressed the need for businesses to also prioritise the triple bottom line, ensuring that business is conducted to create profits while taking care of its people and the planet: “If you’re not creating profits for your organisation, you become a charity.”
Gunawardane elaborated: “Today, it is not possible to only think of doing business without caring about the Earth. We have to think about the planet and ensure that the next generations are able to use the same resources we’ve been using.”
He concluded his thoughts by touching on a key focus area that is necessary for Sri Lanka to emerge from the challenges it is facing: mutual respect in society.
“Creating a respectable society is the most important thing that we should do, starting with respecting the laws of the country,” he stressed.
In summing up, he declared that “if we’re not going to be disciplined, we cannot do anything – and we will make the same mistakes we’ve been making all this time. So it is very important that every citizen of this country thinks they are morally responsible.”
