Sri Lanka’s Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) are grappling to sustain in a global value chain as such industries cannot compete with cheap imports, an eminent group of veteran industry experts said.
Innovation level and value addition in locally made products of MSMEs are at very substandard level making it impossible to compete with global products, they added.
These local industries are on the verge of collapse in the stiff completion with Chinese and Indian products made in high tech factories.
Many small enterprises have already closed down due to lack of capital to upgrade technology, Founder President of this veteran expert group Nawaz Rajabdeen said.
MSMES are currently not in a position to acquire global technical knowhow in making innovative newer products, he added.
Small enterprises cannot bear the cost of funds in purchasing better and updated machinery and most of them have already shut down operations, he said adding that his newly formed confederation will assist to resurrect them.
Such enterprises are unable to compete with foreign companies engaged in exports and larger local enterprises focused more on product standardisation and quality assurance owing to their capacity to acquire awareness and investment.
In a mission of reviving the industry, the Confederation of Micro, Small and Medium Industries (COSMI) was founded by a respected team of business and chamber leaders representing a cross-section of the industrial sector in Sri Lanka, with the sole aim of ‘reviving the MSME sector in Sri Lanka’.
Those veteran business and industrial experts have stepped in to find funding and provide technical knowhow and management expertise on a voluntary basis with their undisputed resolve to protect the industry, Mr. Rajabdeen said.
“COSMI has many activities planned out for its beneficiaries, through regional/international alliances and partnerships, to provide opportunities, exposure and bridge knowledge-gaps of local industrial MSMEs”, Governing Council Chairman Macky Hashim disclosed.
(LI)