The annual UNESCO-APEID meeting on entrepreneurship education was held for the first time this year in South Asia, hosted by Sri Lanka’s National Enterprise Development Authority (NEDA), in Trincomalee and Colombo.
Drawing from their own experience, delegates explored the possibilities of building entrepreneurial skills at primary and secondary levels, vocational training opportunities, the role of women entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurial development in a post-conflict context.
“When you’re talking about entrepreneurship, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re doing business,” said Halimahtun Pehin Sulaiman, Head of the Entrepreneurship and Business Unit of the Education Ministry in Brunei. “It means problem-solving.”
Neleesh Bhatia, Centre Director of SPiNOFF at Singapore Polytechnic, was even more adamant: “An entrepreneur is any individual who has the ability to find a problem that needs to be solved and solves it himself or herself before anybody else,” he said, who “should have the ability to do things by themselves, learn how to find opportunities everywhere, and have the ability to accept failure.”
The word ‘entrepreneur’ was not used in English to describe business until 1852, and before that, it denoted a theatrical production manager. For the past decade, ‘entrepreneur’ and its derivations have been used more than ever, while developing economies create more dynamic domestic markets through the expansion of Small and Medium Enterprise (SME).
Sri Lanka is no exception, and according to the Industry and Commerce Ministry, SMEs account for more than 75 percent of total enterprise, and are ‘the backbone of the economy’. Statistics from the Ministry’s most recently published annual report indicate that SMEs provide almost half of the country’s employment, totalling 52 percent of the GDP.
Given the vital role entrepreneurs play in Sri Lanka’s economy – creating jobs, boosting GDP – the government formed NEDA in 2006 and spurred on far-reaching initiatives like Enterprise Sri Lanka this year. But to make these programmes work, insists NEDA Chairman Dhakshita Bogollagama, the country must first restructure its education.
Entrepreneurship education
Education is one way the government can commit to creating a favourable ecosystem for entrepreneurship and development, said UNESCO Thailand official, Dr. Libeing Wang.
The problem, explained the NEDA chairman, is that “education in Sri Lanka is knowledge-based, rather than execution-based. Parents in Sri Lanka have a very strong preference towards professional jobs,” which is important, he said, because, “parents also guide us and nurture us in terms of what we are supposed to achieve.”
With only 16 percent of the population able to attend university, the country’s most valuable asset, its citizenry, is not able to reach its full potential. Each person has unique skills that they should be able to utilise, and be appreciated for, rather than conforming to a professional mould, said Bogollagama.
The conference highlighted successful educational initiatives, like the entrepreneurship programme at Singapore Polytechnic, which offers vocational training to aspiring entrepreneurs. “It started with 20 students,” explained Bhatia, “and today we run a cohort size of about a thousand.” Through the programme, students create an enterprise from scratch, with mentorship from experts and investors. Projects are reviewed on a weekly basis, and the students are assessed based on the milestones they have achieved, or the research they have done to make those milestones achievable. “Students actually learn by doing, rather than just by listening to a lecture in a classroom or something like that,” he said.
Mrs. S. John Thevathas, Principal of Methodist Girls’ College in Trincomalee, found discussions on entrepreneurial education helpful, as they addressed the needs of her students. “When they come out of university, they don’t have practical experience,” she explained, “they are usually fed up.”
Enterprises in the Eastern Province
NEDA capitalised on the opportunity to host an international conference in Trincomalee by showing off its local work. Delegates were taken to Trincomalee’s Trade Fair, where they saw many small and medium enterprises from the Eastern Province.
The fair showcased the Federation of Eastern Economic Development’s (FEED) handloom products. FEED employs women from the Eastern Province to make handloom apparel. The Daily News spoke with Shamila, the FEED manager, who says that workers are paid Rs. 100 per metre of fabric. “Women can make Rs. 700 a day if they make a sari,” she said.
Sisira Sweets, owned and operated by Ranjith Sisira Kumara, started business in 1993. Kumara had enough money at the time to avoid taking out a loan, which he says is almost always impossible to repay “because of high interest.” In 25 years, Kumara has expanded to two locations in Trincomalee, and proudly earns Rs. 30,000 a month.
However, not all of the stories at Trincomalee’s Trade Fair boasted success. When Rafika’s husband was diagnosed with a serious heart condition, she had no choice but to pursue a loan from the bank to open her sweet company, Sumaiya Sweets, named after her daughter. As Rafika offered samples of her favourite yellow kaju barfi, and a then muscat, she worried about repaying this loan, which she says comes at an interest rate of between 10 and 20 percent. Rafika’s woes could potentially be alleviated by government schemes like Enterprise Sri Lanka, but when the Daily News spoke to her, she had never heard of it.
Impediments to Sri Lanka’s growth
The UNESCO-APEID conference remained mostly positive and congratulatory, but occasionally delegates grappled with regional impediments to the growth of entrepreneurship and SMEs.
Technology figured prominently in these discussions, an area where Sri Lanka is considered to be lagging. “There are gaps in terms of technology skills and financial knowhow,” said UNDP Youth Coordinator Varuna Ponnamperuma.
His sentiment was echoed by Principal Thevathas, who said that even at the university level, “technological knowledge is not shared or given.”
Khong Yoon Loong, CEO of Tech Dome in Malaysia, said in this age, technological shortcomings are not an option for a competitive company: “If you’re not online today, in the not too distant future, you will just be eaten up.”
Another point of obstruction which was perfunctorily mentioned by Laycheng Tan, a UNESCO official from Thailand, was that “entrepreneurship is a double-edged sword. It’s still the government’s responsibility to create jobs.”
This means that responsibility of government to create jobs entails sustaining a stable political environment for foreign investment.
The World Bank, which remains cautiously optimistic about Sri Lanka’s economy, says that “political uncertainty” is “the key risk to an otherwise favorable medium-term outlook.”
Since Sri Lanka advanced from a low-middle income bracket to a middle-income bracket in 2009, political determinants have played an even greater role in shaping economic development. Sri Lanka no longer receives the concessional loans (at 1 or 2 percent interest) that it did before 2009, and since it became a middle-income country, commercial loans come with a much larger 7 percent interest rate.
These higher interest rates fundamentally altered Sri Lanka’s development economy said Kithmina Hewage, a Research Officer at the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS). It required a government-implemented strategy, and “there was no government-led development strategy,” he said. On top of that, the government’s infrastructure projects “did not create the returns needed.” In 2015, “a lot of Chinese infrastructure projects were put on hold,” and foreign investment from both China and India faltered. In 2017, Sri Lanka’s GDP growth rate slowed to a 16-year low of 3.1 percent, which the World Bank partly attributed to natural disasters like flooding and droughts.
Hewage argues that a crucial factor for Sri Lanka’s developing economy is its ability to diversify. Exports have hardly diversified in the past 20 years, reflected in revenue profits. From 1995 to 2003, Sri Lankan export revenues increased from US$ 3 billion to US$ 10 billion, while in nearby Vietnam, which started out with a similar export makeup to Sri Lanka, the country successfully diversified and increased its US$ 5 billion revenue in 1995 to a US$ 145 billion by 2003.
“What the country needs to prioritise is attracting more investment,” said Hewage, and he suggested lowering tariffs. “It’s important that our education sector aligns more,” he continued, “and there’s a lot more employment in the government sector than the private sector.”
Add new comment