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| Sunday, 22 February 2004 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Financial & economic constraints major barrier for our SMIs Despite many innovative State interventions, bilateral and multilateral donor assistance, SMI sector of Sri Lanka is severely handicapped by financial and economic barriers surpassing all other constraints such as managerial, organisational, technical, information and marketing. Though this is not a new finding for many industrialists, this fact was empirically tested and proved by a research conducted by the Industrial Services Bureau (ISB) under the purview of a "Asian Regional Research Project on Energy, Environment and Climate Interrelations (ARRPEEC)" co-ordinated by the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Bangkok under the sponsorship of Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (Sida). One of the outcomes of the phase II of the above project, which was completed in 2001, was the identification of barriers for the promotion of energy efficient and environmentally sound technologies (E3STs) in four industrial sectors selected (desiccated coconut - DC, tea, brick and tile, and ceramics) of four participating countries (Sri Lanka, Philippines, India, China and Vietnam). Though these barriers are both sector and country specific, in order to facilitate cross-country comparisons, a common set of barriers were identified. It is one of the main objectives of this research project is to make policy recommendations so that such barriers are removed and hence E3STs are effectively promoted. However, as the barriers are numerous, most significant barriers need to be identified and dealt with for effective results. Therefore, one of the activities of phase III of this project which is now operational is to priorities barriers identified in phase II. As priorities are sector specific and respondent dependent, it is rather difficult to analyze manually and hence it was decided to use a widely accepted computer software package known as "Analytical Hierarchy Process" (AHP) for this purpose, which is also recognised as a good management tool for decision making when many options are available. ISB conducted four separate sessions for homogeneous groups; one each for industrial sectors identified (DC, Tea and Tile) and one for non-industry representatives such as policy makers, regulators, researchers, academics, financiers, consultants and technology providers. All together, there were 122 respondents. |
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