SANASA Entrepreneur Financial Expertise Centre showcases at JITF-2020

Saturday, 25 January 2020 00:02 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

SANASA Entrepreneur Financial Expertise Centre (SEFEC), the latest innovation of SANASA group, is set to mark its presence at the Jaffna International Trade Fair (JITF) 2020 with an informative stall. The trade fair will be open till tomorrow at the Municipality ground, opposite Subramaniam Park, Jaffna.

With an ambitious goal to empower rural economies by reinforcing cooperative enterprise through value chain development in Sri Lanka, SEFEC was established by SANASA International under the EFECS Project in 2017.

It aims to facilitate sustainable growth and development of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) in four selected value chains – rice, pepper, banana and tourism – recognising the importance of strengthening cooperatives with better market information and stronger networking. SEFEC supports SANASA Campus to deliver local cooperative banks with tailored capacity-building programs for loan officers, managers and board members of local cooperative societies. A value chain is a set of linked activities that work to add value to a product involving actors and actions that improve it while linking commodity producers to processors and markets.

It encompasses the flow of products, knowledge and information, finance, payments, and the social capital needed to organise producers and communities.

Commenting on what they expect from the trade fair, SANASA International’s Samadanie Kiriwandeniya MD stated: “SANASA has been in the forefront of community empowerment projects for more than four decades now. Under SEFEC, we have selected four value chains and implemented them in other parts of the country and learned the process and the behaviour of people. Now we are going to this trade fair to showcase our products to the people in the Northern Province and invite them to reap the maximum benefits from them. As SANASA, we are already working with 200 cooperative societies in the North. It is intended to introduce this process to empower people with rice, banana and tourism value chains as pepper is not grown in the peninsula. This is an all-inclusive program. Men, women, youth, farmers and SMEs are all welcome to take part.”

A team of experts in the SEFEC stall at JITF 2020, are prepared to explain elaborately the concept and functions of supply chains and how to reap benefits from any point of the chain. As experts in MSME financing and value chain development, SEFEC is dedicated to transmitting time-tested knowledge of the SANASA movement, Desjardins movement, and international cooperative movements to strengthen value chains.