The present business environment has two key challenges -the increased cost of production and lack of staff. During Covid a large number of women entrepreneurs did not have a market to sell- now they are sometimes unable to supply to the current demand due to lack of material or labour, Women’s Chamber of Industry and Commerce (WCIC) Chairperson, Anoji De Silva said.
The Women’s Chamber saw women entrepreneurs with whom the WCIC works come up with new products and even new business ventures with the use of materials that are available locally during the height of the pandemic. These women, however, are challenged due to lack of workers as most workers also have started either alternate employment or ventures of their own during the period of lockdowns when they could not travel to work. De Silva said.
Some of these women are now looking at alternate options of sub-contracting and automating processes. There are others who have had to scale down due to lack of or high cost of raw materials.
Some of them are selling at a loss as they are unable to increase prices to cover the cost of production. These women are relying heavily on working capital financing to keep them in business at present.
The root cause of the scarcity of raw materials, fuel price hikes and power outages are all due to the current Forex shortage. The impact is the resultant increase in prices which will result in increased cost of production.
Most entrepreneurs, however, are unable to provide goods at the profit margins they were able to get earlier. Also they are finding it difficult to give credit to their buyers and also allocate funds to stock up required raw materials which you may not be able to find on demand as earlier, the chamber chairperson said noting, however, that the chamber had not heard of any closure of operations except for scaling down, stopping high cost products and focusing more on low cost products.
The Women’s Chamber was also a part of the proposal and statement issued by the Joint Chambers of Commerce in relation to the Forex crisis in September and December 2021.