Financial Times

Printing firms in for a bonanza, wary of ministers
By Duruthu Edirimuni
Printing companies are anticipating good business in the weeks ahead with a surge of enquiries for election printing ahead of the April 2 poll. Several printing companies contacted by The Sunday Times FT said that their sales usually increase by 60 - 75 percent during election time.

Industry officials said they had already got some enquiries from cabinet ministers but were wary of them because of a poor track record of payments. Political parties were also said to prefer smaller printing establishments as it was easier to default on payments.

As a result, some printing presses only work with advertising agencies, as it is easy to recover charges through them. Some companies said that they work on a 'Cash on Demand' (COD) basis.

Others said that since politicians were unruly and were known to default on payments, they had altogether given up printing work for poster campaigns of political parties.

"Ministers seem to be very poor in paying money and we prefer to work with advertising agencies," a printing company official, who did not wish to be identified, said.

He said that usually the UNF and SLFP work is given to private printing firms while the JVP has its own printers.

The work is mainly for poster campaigns and party manifestos and printing firms usually keep a profit margin of around 10-20 percent. "The political parties tend to place orders with small-scale printers as it is easy to forgo payments," a printing company official operating in the suburbs said. Companies who get large orders said that they charge Value Added Tax on the services and not on the printing paper in order to keep their charges reasonable.

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