Page 35 - UDYAMA FINAL final for web

Are SME owners
sufficiently aware about
supportive government
bodies?

Further, the lack of awareness
among the SMEs owners about
the government bodies which
have been established island wide
to provide different services to
SMEs owners has been another
critical problem. The regrettable
story behind this problem is,
some SMEs in rural areas have
never been to any government
body even established in their
own region to get any kind of
service until they go bankrupt
within the very first few years of
their business operations. This is
resulted due to the internal orien-
tation of the SMEs owners in
managing businesses. They usual-
ly pay their attention on internal
operations while trying to over-
come internal weaknesses and to
advance existing business stre-
ngths. Majority of the SMEs
owners have less focus on search-
ing for external opportunities that
they can consider for business
enrichment. As far as the external
orientation of SMEs is concerned,
it is true that they have less focus
or no focus on searching for
government-based SMEs supp-
orting services and bodies than
searching for business expansion
opportunities in the market. Ther-
efore, it is exigent to enhance the
awareness of SMEs owners about
all the Sri Lankan government
bodies available for them to
contact and get the support and
services at any time when they
require.

January 2021 33