National Training of Women Entrepreneurs of Sri Lanka on Enhancing Business Opportunities through Digital Tools

National Training of Women Entrepreneurs of Sri Lanka on Enhancing Business Opportunities through Digital Tools

Building women's entrepreneurship in a way that optimizes their contribution towards national development could help Sri Lanka navigate the current economic challenges and transition towards a sustainable and resilient economy.

Although Sri Lanka has achieved gender parity in access to education, women’s economic participation is well below potential. According to the Department of Census and Statistics, Female participation in the labour force was at 34.1% in 2022, significantly lower than that for men (75.7%). Women’s ownership of formal Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) is low in Sri Lanka, and most women struggle to transition away from informal microscale businesses. Although SMEs contribute about 52% of Sri Lanka’s gross domestic product, only 25% of entrepreneurs are women in the SME sector.

Against this backdrop, United Nations ESCAP South and South-West Asia Office, the Sustainable Development Council of Sri Lanka and the Women's Chamber of Industry & Commerce Sri Lanka jointly organized a two-day training from 21st to 22nd December 2023 to incentivize and capacitate women entrepreneurs to become part of the global supply chain through targeted e-commerce trainings.

The training aimed at enhancing the knowledge and capacity of women entrepreneurs in the application of e-commerce platforms to expand their businesses, and markets and participate in local, regional and global supply chains. The training is aligned with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5.b on enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women.

Delivering the Opening Remarks, the Director General of the Sustainable Development Council, Chamindry Saparamadu highlighted that in the face of the current economic challenges, enabling the entry of SMEs into the export market is a crucial factor for their resilience and growth and that such trainings are important to incentivize, capacitate and equip with the necessary skills the women entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka.

Addressing the gathering, Vice Chairperson of Women’s Chamber of Industry & Commerce (WCIC), Gayani de Alwis stated that, as the world's first women's chamber, WCIC is working towards bridging the digital gap among women entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka and that the Sri Lankan economy will grow exponentially by increasing women’s participation in the labor force and the economy.

Dr. Rajan Sudesh Ratna, Deputy Head, ESCAP South and South-West Asia Office highlighted the impacts of the training (that has been rolled out in the South Asian region including in Sri Lanka) in empowering d over 3000 women entrepreneurs, including in Sri Lanka through enhancing their skills in using digital tools and e-commerce in their business operations.

Delivering the Special Address, World Bank's Country Manager, Maldives and Sri Lanka, Chiyo Kanda stated that the World Bank considers gender, entrepreneurship and digitalization as three things having high transformational potential and as such in the Sri Lanka Country Partnership Framework (2024– 2027) significant emphasis is placed on laying the foundation towards a more inclusive recovery addressing the gender gap in economic participation.

Approximately 50 women entrepreneurs from across the island participated in the training.

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