Driving SME Growth Through Leasing

The above full-day workshop was held on 17 and 18 February 2020 at the Kingsbury Colombo and with the participation of 64 senior business managers involved in business development, marketing as well as accountants and finance professionals of the non-banking financial institutions and the banking sector.

Dr.Sudhir Amembal, Chairman and CEO of Amembal & Halladay conducted the respective workshop The sessions focused mainly on operating leasing and the underlying characteristics that will facilitate SMEs to propel their businesses with easy access to capital goods. Sudhir Amembal, Chairman and CEO of Amembal & Halladay is the world’s foremost authority in lease education and consulting. He has spearheaded lease consultancy engagements conducted on behalf of over 20 governments including China, Indonesia, Korea, Nigeria, and Russia. These engagements required him to review the overall leasing industry in each country and devise strategic recommendations to facilitate the growth of the industry. With SMEs dispersed across geographical locations in Sri Lanka, there is a need and an opportunity to reach out to this sector by offering them incentives, leasing options, and knowledge sharing to encourage them to innovate and improve their products and services.

As a part of the above workshop there was a CEO Forum also held as an evening function at the same venue. Mr. Roshan Abeygoonewardena, Chairman of FHA, Mr. J P Gamalath, Director , Dept. of SNBFI, CBSL, Mr. Prasanna de Silva, DGM, Central Finance PLC, Mr. Naomal Gunawardena, Partner of Nithya Partners, Mr. Sampath Rathnayake, Programme Coordinator of UNDP Sri Lanka, were among the speakers of the CEO’s Forum. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) endorsed this workshop by coming in as Strategic Partner. In addition to UNDP, Fintrex Finance PLC, DIMO, Singer Sri Lanka, Arpico Finance PLC and Alliance Finance PLC were among the co-sponsors.