International Conference on Social Sciences 2013
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Item An empirical study on access to finance of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises(Culture, Globalization and the Developing World, 2nd ICSS, 2013) Perera W K T C; Semasinghe W MSmall and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) play a vital role in any economy through a number of channels such as contributing to the growth of GDP, providing employment opportunities, generating foreign earnings, reducing regional imbalances and alleviating poverty. SMEs perform a strategic role in Sri Lankan economy, too. As data reveals vast majority of Sri Lankan industries are included in this sector. Shortage of capital or access to finance is identified as the single largest constraint, among others, for the development of SME sector in Sri Lanka. Although banking sector of the country has introduced a range of financing facilities for SMEs, as evidence shows, these facilities are not adequately accessed. Hence, the focus of this study is why SMEs do not access adequately these facilities in order to fulfill their financial requirements? The main objective of this study is to examine the causes for inadequate access of SMEs to the formal financial sector. To achieve the assigned objectives, primary as well as secondary data were used. Primary data were collected from 50 manufacturing SMEs in Kalutara Divisional Secretariat Division by administering a questionnaire survey and conducting brief interviews with the entrepreneurs. As the main focus was to examine the causes for inadequate access of SMEs to the formal financial sector, ?Accessibility? was employed as the dependant variable while six other variables namely Education level, Experience, Attitude about the interest rates, and Collateral needs, Finance knowledge of the entrepreneur and perception regarding the procedures of the formal sector were employed and tested as independent variables. Since the variables are nominal scale, cross tabulations were used to assess the relationship between the dependant variable and the independent variables. Four independent variables namely Education level, Experience, Attitude about the interest rates and Collaterals of the entrepreneurs depicted a significant relationship with Accessibility while other two variables did not reveal a significant relationship.Item Poverty incidence in Sri Lanka: trends and challenges(Culture, Globalization and the Developing World, 2nd ICSS, 2013) Semasinghe W MPoverty alleviation is the ultimate goal of almost all development strategies which are implementing mainly in developing countries. This is because in a broader sense, development means the expansion of the range of choices and opportunities that people have. This is what we discuss broadly as alleviating poverty. In Sri Lanka, poverty alleviation has become one of the key targets of development policy arena during the past few decades. In addition to the overall development programs, there are several programs distinctively designed for combatting poverty. The main objective of this study is to examine the trends of poverty incidence in Sri Lanka during the past few decades and challenges of poverty alleviation strategies. The evaluation is based mainly on the secondary data. Although analysis is descriptive in nature in addition to the descriptive statistical methods moderate analysis methods (correlation and regression) are used to examine the functional relationship between relevant variables such as poverty, economic growth, per capita income and income distribution. The major limitation of the study is that it focuses only on the income poverty although poverty is more than the inadequate income or expenditure. As preliminary result shows poverty incidence has drastically declined during the recent past in all three sectors. Still, poverty burden is highest in the rural sector although poverty rate is highest in estate sector. Mean while, although, the decline of poverty incidence in the country is compatible with the economic growth took place during the past few years, it is not statistically significant. Poor targeting, lack of funding, poor implementation and supervision and the allocation inefficiency can be identified as the major challenges encountered by the poverty targeted programs.Item Impact of non-farm activities on rural poverty(Culture, Globalization and the Developing World, 2nd ICSS, 2013) Rajapaksha U G; Semasinghe W MRural poverty means the deprivation of basic needs of inhabitants in the rural sector, which is a geographic area located outside the cities and towns. Eradicating or at least reducing rural poverty was given highest priority within the overall policy framework of almost all developing countries, mainly because poverty incidence in this sector is considered as one of the major obstacles for overall development. Although, various subsidiary programs have been tested by individual countries for over many decades, still poverty in this rural sector is considerably high. In order to have a long term solution for the deprivation of needs in rural human being, Non-Farm-Opportunities would be sustainable strategies. For over past two-three decades, large number of studies have been documented in relation to this theme. In the present study, a substantial amount of published articles were referred in order to grasp the real gravity of Non-Farm-Opportunities such as poverty alleviation tools in the rural sector. The objectives guiding the analysis of literature were to; understand the relationship between income and poverty, identifying the existing barriers in the field of rural Non-Farm-Opportunities, and the impact of the lack of resources in rural sector to Non-Farm-Opportunities, identifying the impact of education to Non-Farm-Opportunities, discuss the relationship among education, human development and rural agricultural productivity and to observe the employability of rural youth as Non-Farm-Opportunities. This review is instigated by searching key academic databases using relevant search questions. The literature suggests that overall there is an inverse relationship between Non-Farm-Opportunities of the rural and the level of poverty.