Cash crunch killing SMEs: SLUNBA

Chairperson of the Sri Lanka United National Businesses Alliance (SLUNBA) Taniya S Abeywsundera yesterday (08) said that the country’s small and medium scale enterprises were in the death throes as the government, and top officials had failed to provide relief to those enterprises.

Addressing a press conference, in Colombo, she said that around 4.5 million Lankans, employed in the small and medium enterprises (SMEs, might lose their jobs, in the coming months, unless the government stepped in and assisted businesses. “The cash crunch is killing the SMEs. If this situation continues further, many SMEs will go bankrupt soon. It is inevitable to prevent job losses of hundreds of thousands,” Abeysundera said.

Abeysundera said that there were problems pertaining to the imports of raw materials for the SMEs. The demand for the dollars had decreased and that resulted in an increase of dollar reserves. This is now wrongly being interpreted as strengthening of the rupee. There is no such thing in reality.

She warned that a lot of SMEs might collapse in the next month unless the government granted a debt moratorium. “4.5 million people work in SMEs. When we asked the Central Bank Governor, he said that he can’t assure a debt moratorium. He was worried about the banking sector. I would like to ask the Governor, wouldn’t the banking sector collapse if the SME’s can’t pay their loans?”