Factories, workers in crisis
Apparel workers’ jobs in over a 100 companies are still hanging in the balance even as private sector workers were being asked to receive Rs.14, 500 or 50 per cent of the basic salary during this COVID-19 crisis period. The government together with the trade unions and the Employers’ Federation of Ceylon (EFC) reached an [...]
Moratorium challenges for SL banks ahead
Sri Lankan banks will struggle with moratorium repayments towards the year end, but the real nightmares will be recovering other term loans, say worried bankers. Top bankers say that they’re still riding the honeymoon period on the moratorium and working capital loans which the government declared in March. They fear the reserves will dry up [...]
Tea Board to fund tea smallholders
The Sri Lanka Tea Board (SLTB) will assist tea smallholders with a financial stimulus package as an allocation of approximately Rs.300 million has been made for this purpose. The SLTB believes that to deal with issues in low crop resulting in reduced production due to the drought and lack of replanting, a stimulus package would [...]
Sri Lankan economy drags into a modest recession
Sri Lankan economy is set to face a modest recession of around – 0.6 or a slow growth of 1.4 per cent if the coronavirus is contained within two or three more months under moderate global recovery even with high overall impact on the island nation, economic analysts said. The COVID-19 economic shock is now [...]
Closure of CSE not a ‘well-managed event’
The prolonged closure of the CSE was from a foreign investor point of view certainly not a “well managed event”, with fund managers skeptical about putting cash into the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE). “It is difficult to understand why the market was not being operated remotely like many other exchanges in the region or in [...]
Rescuing migrant workers
On Sunday, a social media clip showed a poultry farmer drawing a curtain in a yard outside and as he did so, hundreds of chickens scrambled out, some flying in anxiety to get out of probably being cooped up for a long spell. A caption on the clip says….….“This is what will happen on Monday [...]
Beneficiaries of COVID-19
One of the supervisors of my doctoral research in the mid-1990s, the late Professor Peter Kloos from the Free University of Amsterdam, once told me that many social science scholars have a romantic idea about the past, which is anti-progressive: “They think that the past was better than the present, and lament about social change”. [...]
Sri Lanka in dilemma over LPG prices
Despite the sharp drop in the global LPG price, Sri Lankan consumers being forced to stay home amid COVID-19 are still to receive its benefit with no sign of a price reduction. However the two national LP Gas providers say that their import and other costs are high along with the depreciation of rupee and [...]
Grafo launches cordless electrostatic sprayer for disinfecting, sanitising
Victory Innovations Co, USA, is the world’s first manufacturer of the mobile cordless electrostatic sprayer, specifically made and designed for versatility, for infection prevention and control applications. The product has been launched in Sri Lanka by Grafo Laboratories (Pvt) Ltd. Victory electrostatic sprayer is cordless and it operates on a chargeable lithium-ion battery. This allows [...]
SLT Group 1Q 2020 operating profits rise by 28%
Sri Lanka Telecom PLC Group operating profit for the quarter to end-March 2020 was reported at Rs.3.2 billion, an improvement of 28.6 per cent compared same period in the previous year. Total revenue for the quarter was Rs.22.1 billion, a 3.8 per cent increase compared to Rs. 21.3 billion during the same period in 2019. [...]
Data base to navigate MSMEs through COVID-19
As Sri Lanka resumes public and private sector activity amidst COVID-19 moving from a health crisis to an economic crisis, state authorities are now trying to ascertain how Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises’ (MSME) will weather this storm and where they need to focus efforts. MSMEs have been directed to take part in a major [...]
Travel to become a “costly” affair in future
Globally people will be adverse to travel with most of the initial travel plans being more on moving around to meet friends and relatives amidst concerns of social distancing and new protocols in travelling around. These issues were brought to the fore in discussing how the future of travel will be once the quarantine period [...]
Social Distancing – Can robots help us?
Social distancing is a term which can frequently be heard throughout the world at present as a result of COVID-19. What it means is keeping space between two persons, yourself and a person near you. This is not the natural behaviour of the human being and this is physical distancing between two persons in the [...]
Grand Hotel Garden
The Grand Hotel, Nuwara Eliya garden creates a pure and incomparable example of an English garden in the middle of tropical Sri Lanka which perfectly matches the architecture of the hotel and the historical ‘Little England’ theme. With the full bloom of different varieties of Antirrhinum, Salvia, Delphinium, Aster, Stock, Zinnia, Marigold, Calendula, Dahlia, Phlox, [...]
Eshana De Silva appointed as NDB Chairman
Former Pan Asia Banking Corporation (PABC) chairman Eshana De Silva has been appointed as a director and chairman of the National Development Bank PLC with effect from May 14, the bank announced on Thursday. He succeeds outgoing Chairman Kavan Ratnayaka who served the NDB Board for nearly five years as a director including the last year [...]
Sampath Bank’s 1Q2020 operating profit down, but post-tax profit rises
Operating profit for the first quarter ending March 2020 at Sampath Bank fell by 10.8 per cent but there was a moderate growth in post-tax profit (PAT), the bank announced on Wednesday in releasing its first quarter 2020 results. Due to the unsettled economic environment, the prospects for Sri Lanka’s banking sector in 2020 remains [...]
ComBank makes steady start to 2020
Healthy growth in business volumes and an extraordinary contribution from other income, before the slowdown attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, have enabled the Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC to make a steady start to 2020, despite the continuing increase in impairment charges quarter-on-quarter. In a media release on Thursday, the bank said operating profit before [...]