AIS assists local business to be more competitive

Local companies, small and medium scale entrepreneurs are to be provided with up-to-date information on the world’s best business practices and international standards to be more competitive in the domestic and international markets. The Association of International Standards takes measures to create awareness on best practices and international standards on quality, environment, human resources management, social accountability, health, and safety, information technology and security. Speaking to The Sunday Times FT on the sidelines of the 10th Annual General Meeting of the AIS, President of the Association Sanjeev Jayasinghe said that workshops, seminars, meetings, national and international conferences have been organized by his association to propagate best practices among local business community in collaboration with Ceylon Chamber of Commerce .

Sri Lanka, a forerunner in implementing an effective Trade Facilitation programme in Asia, since 1980, eliminated superfluous trade and transport procedures and documents and adapted international standards, codes etc. that helped to simplify and automate the systems to a great extent.

However, the country has failed to reap the full benefits of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), and a recent survey revealed that, on average, it takes two to seven days to clear imports while the duration to complete the export procedure have not changed significantly, he said. All these problems could be effectively tackled by adopting best practices and international standards by public and private sector institutions employing around seven million persons. It has been revealed that the monitory value from the waste of labour hours is in the region of 980 billion rupees per annum in Sri Lanka. The AIS plans to implement a programme to propagate international standards on Human Resources with a view of eliminating waste, empowering front line workers, responding promptly to customer requests and optimizing across the value chain.The efforts of the AIS have positively enabled businesses to be more competitive in both domestic and international markets. Witnessing the success of many Sri Lankan businesses actively subscribing to and adopting International Standards, AIS has continuously reviewed and re-redrafted its strategic directions, Jayasinghe said.