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| Sunday, 3 October 2004 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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PLC to assist plantation sector By Hiran H.Senewiratne The People's Leasing Company Ltd (PLC), a fully owned subsidiary of the People's Bank of Sri Lanka raised Rs 250 million from Bank of Ceylon (BOC) by mortgaging their lease receivables recently. This is a direct long term revolving facility extended for the first time by BOC to the market leader in leasing. Meanwhile,PLC has established an exclusive and dedicated plantation leasing unit to support the sector in a big way. Only a few leasing companies are engaged in planation leasing business in the country and this inspired us to diversify into this lucrative business, PLC Chief Executive Officer D.P Kumarage said. He said that the company intends to negotiate with the Asia Development Bank (ADB) for a credit line to assist the plantation sector and until such time they will be using our money for it, through normal securitisation and borrowing. Manager-Plantation Unit Chamara Udugama said that PLC has decided to diversify its portfolio to the plantation sector since it has a great potential as well as a paramount duty to support this prime sector in the country. He said that this is the only leasing company in the country which exclusively handled planation accounts, while other companies handle the plantation sector on an adhoc basis. He said that plantation industry's contribution towards the countries GDP is enormous when compared with other sectors and it has inspired us to enter into this business. At present this leasing facility is available only for tea specially in the Central, Sabaragamuwa and Southern provinces. Later, it will be extended to other industries covering rubber and coconut. Since the company will mainly use its own funds for this purpose, it is now eagerly looking forward to obtaining various credit lines from international donor agencies to be the participatory institute to provide financial assistance for eligible plantation companies . At present the PLC lends money from local and foreign agencies and an appropriate foreign funding line is the need of the hour at this juncture. PLC will visit all planation companies involved in various businesses related to the sector to get feed back. The PLC started with an initial capital of Rs 25 million and it has now reached a net asset position of Rs 1.1 billion. |
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