NCE pleads with Govt. Salvage duped exporters
There are a large number of exporters mainly in the apparel, spices, footwear and rubber sectors who have not been paid their dues for their exports and we have made representations to the Government and especially Minister Dinesh Gunawardena who also holds both portfolios Foreign Relations and Labour as well, Secretary General / CEO of the National Chamber of Exporters Shiham Marikar told the Daily News Finance yesterday.
He said that most of these exporters have appealed to the NCE to intervene in the resolution of their settlements and added that he was personally aware of a large scale apparel exporter who had a whopping US $ 1.2 Billion worth of apparel stocks which have been rejected by the buyer, which is a catastrophic situation.
They come out the situation that they have no storage space to store the goods that they have exported. Some have said that their ports of call are not working and therefore, they cannot handle the goods that have been exported, Marikar lamented.
The NCE Secretary General/ CEO also said that he had also corresponded with the Colombo based foreign embassies of the buyer countries and made awareness about the importance of best practices being adhered to, and that the Embassies of those countries had also been very receptive to the representations. They had even volunteered to intervene and asked for the names of the corporate entities as well.
Marikkar also said that the Chamber understands and appreciates if the cases at that end are authentic and genuine and he also added that it was not up to the overseas buyers to exploit the situation as well. He also said that the National Chamber of Exporters had also made representations to the Chambers of Commerce of those defaulting countries as well.
Marikar also said that he had made representations to Minister Dinesh Gunawardena that these exporters had suffered heavily and that the Government should at least intervene and pay them at least the minimum wages for the next three to four months without which these factories will have to close down which will not only have economic but political repercussions as well such as riots as well.
He said that the Chamber members have paid the original salaries of their employees for March and April, taking into consideration the Sinhalese and Tamil New Year as well.
source http://www.dailynews.lk/2020/05/07/finance/218034/nce-pleads-govt-salvage-duped-exporters
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