Empowering Entrepreneurs, Post-War, to Grow and Flourish
Small enterprises are the lifeblood of Sri Lanka's economy, and an endless series of nettlesome, costly challenges plague entrepreneurs. Permits, regulations, and transportation challenges have long tied up time and assets, preventing regional towns from flourishing. As the war drew to its violent conclusion last year, we began empowering business owners to more deeply unite and advocate for themselves, effectively removing, one by one, barriers to growth. Our efforts have paid dividends. First, we helped re-shape the way business owners and their local officials communicate, supporting new, regular, constructive dialogues where thorny infrastructure issues are now plainly discussed—and solved. Second, for maximum impact, if an issue now stalls with local or regional leaders, entrepreneurs can escalate it to the national level. Our new, streamlined private-public dialogue strategy is improving the local business environments in Central, Southern, North Western, and Eastern Provinces and typifies our commitment to a balanced, evenhanded approach in post-war Sri Lanka. In the Eastern Province of lagoon-rich Batticaloa, Mr. K.M. Jeyaram, a retired banker and chief executive officer of the Batticaloa District Chamber of Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture, takes full advantage of the new advocacy mechanism. "There were checkpoints," he says, pointing in the direction of Kallady, where fish and prawns are driven out daily to Colombo. Delayed at time-consuming police points, fish spoiled in trucks and small vehicles, financially crippling fishing families, buyers, drivers, and urban vendors. "But now they removed the check points," he smiles. "We are grateful. Now people can get their work done."