UNESCAP and WCIC open up new vistas of e-commerce for women entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka

UNESCAP South and Southwest Asia Office – the Sustainable Development Council of Sri Lanka and the Women’s Chamber of Industry and Commerce Sri Lanka jointly organized two-day training in December 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.

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.

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 over 3000 women entrepreneurs by enhancing their skills in using digital tools and e-commerce in their business operations.

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.