Hambantota tourism entrepreneurs briefed on new grants scheme
View(s):The Hambantota District Chamber of Commerce (HDCC) in collaboration with the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises in
Participants at the seminar on the new grants scheme.
Tourism (ASMET) Sri Lanka and the Ministry of Economic Development recently organised an awareness programme for “The Sustainable Tourism Development Project (STDP) – Matching Grants Scheme for SME’s in Tourism”.
Resource persons from the People’s Bank and the SwitchAsia Project also participated to educate SMEs on how to qualify and benefit from this scheme for the improvement of their businesses, while adding value to the Sri Lankan tourism industry as a whole.
The chamber said in a statement that the new project is aimed at providing matching grants of up to Rs. 10-million, exclusively for the benefit of tourism-related SMEs.
A.B.M. Ashraff, Director, Tourism, Private Sector Development, and the Sustainable Tourism Development Project of the Ministry of Economic Development, Suresh de Mel, President, ASMET and Director, HDCC; Ganesha Siriwardana, Chairman, Deepsouth Tourism Development Committee, and over 50 local SMEs participated.
Mr. de Mel and Mr. Siriwardene encouraged local SME’s to join the associations – ASMET and/or HDCC, in order to learn how to benefit from projects like this, to network with other members, and to learn about best practices of the industry. They both concluded that projects of this nature were vital to formalize the informal sector and to empower the SME sector in Sri Lanka Tourism, and thanked the Government for the opportunity given.
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