The Commercial Bank of Ceylon conducted a financial literacy program recently for a group of micro entrepreneurs consisting of green leaf suppliers in Matugama, in collaboration with the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.
The 164 green leaf suppliers who participated in the program, supply their produce to the Aruna Tea Factory.
This was the tenth such event conducted by the Bank for micro and agriculture related entrepreneurs in 2018. The Bank’s objective in conducting these programs is to enhance the financial literacy levels of the entrepreneurs.
The resource person for the program was Senior Assistant Director of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Rohitha Abeykoon, an experienced speaker on financial literacy and business development.
The program was attended by Commercial Bank’s Assistant General Manager - Personal Banking, Delakshan Hettiarachchi, Senior Manager, Development Credit Department, Mohan Fernando, the Bank’s Matugama Branch Manager, A. B. N. Asantha, Chairman of the Aruna Group of Companies, Ajith Indika, the Group’s Managing Director, Rumesh Hasantha and the Chief Executive Officer Dr. Kanishka Samarasinghe.
Commercial Bank has also supported this customer segment with the launch of a Hybrid Debit Card cum Identification Card powered by Sony ‘FeliCa’ Near Field Communication (NFC) technology.
This personalised card enables the automation of the calculation of payments to leaf suppliers.
These payments are instantly transmitted to a central server by a data acquisition device, and then transferred to their savings accounts at Commercial Bank.
The Bank has been conducting awareness programs for micro entrepreneurs in different sectors of business in many areas of the country. The Bank recently reached the milestone of having assisted more than 7,000 entrepreneurs through such programs, within six years.
These programs are supported by the Bank’s 16 Agriculture and Micro Finance Units which play a key role in helping the Bank to identify specific needs of entrepreneurs who need assistance to develop either their agriculture activities or micro businesses.
These units are dedicated to promote agriculture lending and micro finance.